The English pre-Raphaelite painters, their associates and successors

&

THE ENGLISH

PRE-RAPHAELITE
PAINTERS

THEIR ASSOCIATES AND
SUCCESSORS

BY PERCY BATE

LONDON

GEORGE BELL & SONS

1905

o

TO HIS MOTHER

WITH ALL LOVE AND GRATITUDE

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

BY THE AUTHOR

XI. VII. MCMI.

First Edition, 4/0, 1899
Second Edition, Revised, 8vo, 1901
Second Edition, Reprinted, 1902
Third Edition, 1905

PREFACE

THIS book is neither a chronique intime nor a collection
of anecdotes : it is simply an endeavour to give both
in letterpress and illustrations a brief review of the artists
who have painted under the Pre-Raphaelite inspiration,
and of the work which they have done. It is somewhat
remarkable that though ample and authoritative histories
of the English Pre-Raphaelite painters have been pro-
mised, and though scattered notices, critical and biogra-
phical, have been published from time to time, no epitome
has been written to set forth succinctly, and in a handy
form, the essential facts of the inception and rise of the
movement, and the work of the founders and followers of
the school as a whole. Though it would have been
impossible in the space available to attempt a complete
and elaborate history of a movement so vast and far-
reaching, the writer's aim has been to produce a book
treating the great artistic crusade historically and in an
unbiassed spirit ; and even in so short a work an attempt
has been made to discriminate the qualifications of the
different workers, and to show the high aim which has
underlain and the brilliant achievement which has crowned
their strenuous endeavours.

The space in such a volume as the present precluded
all thought of dealing with any other than pictorial art :
the history of sculpture and the decorative arts as affected
by Pre-Raphaelite influence — witnessed, for instance, in
the labours of Morris and Woolner, to name no others —
is perforce omitted. Necessarily omitted is also all allusion
b

vi PREFACE

to the fact that many of the artists whose work is treated
of here are not only painters but poets, and the friends of
poets. That such a fact is of high importance in studying
their work is most true, but the adequate consideration of
so fascinating a feature would extend this volume far
beyond its due limits. But the reader who bears in mind
that Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Thomas
Woolner, James Collinson, Walter Deverell, Walter Crane,
J. W. Inchbold, Sir Noel Paton, and William Bell Scott are
all poets of varying achievement, and who remembers that
in the inner history of the movement the names, inter alia,
of Christina Rossetti, William Morris, Algernon Charles
Swinburne, Coventry Patmore, Mathilde Blind, Philip
Bourke Marston, and T. Gordon Hake, loom large, will
see more clearly the aim of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, and
will comprehend the intimate association of poetic feeling
and expression with their devotion to veracity of present-
ment.

Reference has been made, as far as was possible, in
the list of illustrations, to the owners, artists, and photo-
graphers who have allowed their pictures to appear in this
volume. The author and publishers desire, however, to
express here their appreciation of the kindness and
courtesy they have almost invariably experienced, and to
tender their cordial thanks for the permissions for repro-
duction, without which no adequate representation of the
Pre-Raphaelite School of Painting would have been
possible.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

IT would seem to be evident from the fact that a new
edition of this volume is called for, that public interest
in the great artistic crusade that marked the middle of
the nineteenth century in England still continues keen ;
and the opportunity has been taken to show in the
illustrations to this second edition an even more complete
and representative selection of the work of the artists of
that date who were affected by the wave of Pre-
Raphaelism. Additional pictures by the Brethren and
their direct associates are included, others by painters
who were temporarily under their influence have been
added, and the works by the Scottish painters will show
in a very interesting way that, without the personal
contact or direct influence of the originators of the move-
ment, there was, as a result of their propaganda, something
"in the air" at that date to which young and sensitive
artists thrilled responsive.

That the influence of the Brethren and their tenets is
still felt among painters is obvious to those who follow the
course of art as apparent in exhibitions, in magazines,
and in book illustrations ; and, accordingly, among the
illustrations to this new edition will be found a few, at
least, of the most typical recent manifestations of Pre-
Raphaelism. Some of these pictures which it was
intended to include have been, however, unavoidably
omitted, owing to difficulties of various kinds which
attended their reproduction.

viii PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

The letterpress has been carefully revised, completed,
and brought up to date, and it is the author's hope that,
in this new form, this volume may be found an adequate
epitome of, and guide to, a most interesting and note-
worthy phase of British art.

THE ROYAL GLASGOW INSTITUTE

OF THE FINE ARTS,

August 1901.

CONTENTS

CHAPTKR pArE

PREFACE ....... v

I. THE FORMATION OF THE PRE-RAPHAELITE

BROTHERHOOD : AIMS AND IDEALS . . I

II. THE FOUNDER OF PRE-RAPHAELISM : FORD

MADOX BROWN .... 17

III. THE STAUNCH PRE-RAPHAELITE: HOLMAN

HUNT ....... 25

IV. THE TRANSITORY PRE-RAPHAELITE : JOHN

EVERETT MILLAIS ..... 31

V. PRE-RAPHAELITE AND IDEALIST : DANTE

GABRIEL ROSSETTI ..... 39

VI. THE OTHER PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN :
JAMES COLLINSON, WILLIAM MICHAEL
ROSSETTI, FREDERICK GEORGE STEPHENS,
THOMAS WOOLNER, AND WALTER HOWELL
DEVERELL ...... $2

VII. THE ROMANTIC INFLUENCE : FREDERICK
SANDYS, SIMEON SOLOMON, AND GEORGE
WILSON ....... 56

VIII. PRE-RAPHAELISM AS A PERMANENT IN-
FLUENCE, I. : ARTHUR HUGHES AND NOEL
PATON ....... 69

IX. PRE-RAPHAELISM AS A PERMANENT IN-
FLUENCE, II. : CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS,
WILLIAM MORRIS, W. S. BURTON, W.
LINDSAY WINDUS, MATTHEW JAMES LAW-
LESS, ROBERT MARTINEAU, AND W. J.
WEBBE ..... ', . 75

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JOHN BRETT, A.R.A.

THE STONE-BREAKER . . . . • 14

By permission of James Barrow ', Esq.
ELEANOR F. BRICKDALE

THE DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES . . . .114

By permission of the Artist.
FORD MADOX BROWN

CORDELIA (Photogravure Plate) . . Frontispiece

From a photograph by F. Hollyer.

CHRIST WASHING PETER'S FEET . . . .18
From the painting in the National Gallery of
British Art.

AUTUMN LEAVES 18

By permission of Arthur Kay, Esq^J.P.

WORK;*^— . - T~" " T~ . ~~7 . . 2C

From the painting in the City Art Gallery,

Manchester.

CHAUCER AT THE COURT OF EDWARD III . . 20
From the painting in the Sydney Municipal

Gallery.

ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW'S SON . . . .22
From the painting at South Kensington Museum.

KING RENEWS HONEYMOON 22

By permission of the late James Pyke Thompson,

Esq.
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.

CLARA VON BORK 100

By permission of W. Graham Robertson, Esq.
THE BACKGAMMON PLAYERS . . . .100
By permission of Lord Battersea. From a
photograph by F. Hollyer.

xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.— continued, PAGE

THE MERCIFUL KNIGHT 102

From a photograph by F. Holly er.

KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID . .104

From the painting in the National Gallery of
British Art.

THE MILL 104

By permission of the late Constanttne lonides,
Esq. From a photograph by Caswall Smith.
LOVE DISGUISED AS REASON . . . .106

From a photograph by F. Holly er.

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL . . - . .106

From a photograph by Caswall Smith.

W. S. BURTON

THE WOUNDED CAVALIER 78

THE WORLD'S GRATITUDE '. . . . .78
FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH . . . . .78
By permission of Mrs Burton.

HUGH CAMERON, R.S.A^

GOING TO THE HAY 90

By permission of the Artist and the Board of

Manufactures, Edinburgh.
KATHERINE CAMERON

MHAIRI DHU . . . . . . .118

By permission of Messrs. James Connell &

Sons, Glasgow.
CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS

> CONVENT THOUGHTS 76

From the painting in the University Galleries,
Oxford.

THE PEDLAR 76

From the painting in the City Art Gallery,

Manchester.
JAMES COLLINSON

THJ*-^EJL*U0NCIATION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH OF

HUNGARY 52

By permission of C. R. Park, Esq.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii

F. CADOGAN COWPER TACK

THE GOOD SAMARITAN . . . .114

By permission of the Artist

WALTER CRANE

EUROPA , . 94

By permission of the Artist.
THE ROLL OF FATE 96

By permission of Somerset Beaumont, Esq.
THE MOWER 96

By permission of the Artist.

WILLIAM DAVIS

VIEW NEAR HALE . * . . . .86

By permission of William Coltart, Esq.

EVELYN DE MORGAN c

FLORA 112

By permission of William Imrie, Esq.
" Mercy and Truth have met together ;
Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other? , 112

By permission of the Artist.
WALTER HOWELL DEVERELL «-'

SCENE FROM "TWELFTH NIGHT" (Act ii., Sc. 4) . 54

By permission of Mrs A. Steele Roberts.
MR W. FETTES DOUGLAS, P.R.S.A.

THE CURIOSITY SHOP, ROME .... 88

By permission of John Wordie, Esq.
THE RECUSANT'S CONCEALMENT . . . .88
By permission of Mrs L. Robertson

WOLFRAM ONSLOW FORD

PORTRAIT OF E. ONSLOW FORD, Esq., R.A. . . 118
By permission of the Artist.

ARTHUR J. GASKIN f

THE ANNUNCIATION . . . . . .118

By permission of the Artist.

[OSEPH HENDERSON, R.S.W.

THE BALLAD . . . . . . .90

By permission of John Henderson, Esq.

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ARTHUR HUGHES

SILVER AND GOLD . •

By permission of H. H. Trist, Esq.
APRIL LOVE . •

By permission of H. Boddington, Esq.

W. HOLMAN HUNT, R.W.S.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

From the painting at Keble College , Oxford.
THE Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

From the painting in the City Art Gallery,

Birmingham.
THE HIRELING SHEPHERD .

From a painting in the City Art Gallery^

Manchester.
THE AWAKENED CONSCIENCE .

By permission of Sir A. H. Fairbairn, Bart.
THE FINDING OF THE SAVIOUR IN THE TEMPLE.

By permission of Mrs Holt.
THE SCAPEGOAT ....

By permission of Sir Cuthbert Quilter and Messrs

Graves 6° Co.
ISABELLA AND THE POT OF BASIL

By permission of the late James Hall, Esq.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE INNOCENTS

From the painting in the Walker Art Gallery,
Liverpool.

JOHN WILLIAM INCHBOLD

LANDSCAPE (DEWAR STONE, DARTMOOR)

From the painting in the National Gallery of
British Art.

MATTHEW J. LAWLESS

THE SICK CALL

By permission of William Coltart, Esq.

A TOPER

By permission of Viscount Powerscourt, K.P.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

G. D. LESLIE, R.A. PAGE

DANTE'S LEAH 86

By permission of H. H. Trist, Esq.

}. F. LEWIS, R.A.

. LlLIUM AURATUM 92

By permission of Sir Cuthbert Quilter, Bart.

R. B. MARTINEAU

THE LAST DAY IN THE OLD HOME . . .82
From the painting in the National Gallery of
British Art.

WILLIAM M'TAGGART, R.S.A.

THE THORN IN THE FOOT 90

By permission of Mrs Croall.

SIDNEY H. MFTEYARD

HOPE COMFORTING LOVE IN BONDAGE . .114
By permission of the Artist.

SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A.

LORENZO AT THE HOUSE OF ISABELLA . . 10
From the painting in the Walker Art Gallery,
Liverpool.

OPHELIA 32

From the painting in the National Gallery of

British Art.
CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF His PARENTS . . 32

By permission of Messrs Ml Queen Bros.
THE DEPARTURE OF THE CRUSADERS . . .34

By permission of Mrs C. E. Lees.
SlR ISUMBRAS AT THE FORD .... 34
THE ESCAPE OF A HERETIC . . . .36
By permission of Sir W. H. Houldsworth, Bart.,
M.P.

THE BRIDESMAID 36

From the painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum,

Cambridge.

THE HIGHLAND LASSIE ..... 38
By permission of Henry Willett, Esq.

xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A.— continued. PAGE

MERCY — ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY, 1572 . . 38
From the painting in the National Gallery of

British Art
GERALD MOIRA

"And with his foot and with his wing feathers

He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair;
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth." . .114

— D. G. ROSSETTI.
By permission of the Artist.
HENRY MOORE, R.A.

A WHITE CALM AFTER RAIN x

By permission of C. W. Mitchell, Esq.
FAIRFAX MURRAY

LOVE'S NOCTURNE .... .108

Bv permission of the Artist.
SIR NOEL PATON, R.S.A.

THE BLUIDIE TRYSTE . 72

By permission of James Coats, Esq.
DAWN — LUTHER AT ERFURT . . . 72

By permission of Robert H. Brechin, Esq.
VAL. C. PRINSEP, R.A.

* ' Whispering Tongues can poison truth, \
And to be wroth with one we've loved,
Doth work like poison on the brain " . ,88

From the painting at the Arts Club, by permission

of the Artist.
W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON

MY LADY GREENSLEEVES . . « . .114

By permission of the Artist
CAYLEY ROBINSON

THE BEAUTIFUL CASTLE 116

By permission of the Artist.
T. M. ROOKE

AHAB'S COVETING . . . . . no

By permission of Lord Batter sea.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI PAGE

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA 40

By permission of W. R. Afoss, Esq. From a
photograph by F. Hollyer.

LADY LILITH 40

From a photograph by Caswall Smith.
THE DAY DREAM (Photogravure Plate) . . .42
By permission of the late Constantine lonides^
Esq.

JOLI CCEUR -44

By permission of Miss Horniman. From a
photograph by F. Hollyer.

LA BELLA MANO 44

By permission of Sir Cuthbert Quitter, Bart.
VENUS VERTICORDIA ... 46

From a photograph by Caswall Smith.
LA DONNA DELLA FINESTRA .... 46
By permission of W. R. Moss, Esq. From a

photograph by F. Hollyer.
THE BELOVED (First version) .... 48

By permission of W. M. Rossetti, Esq.
ELIZABETH ELEANOR ROSSETTI

LADY CLARE 50

By permission of Fairfax Murray ', Esq.
LUCY ROSSETTI

ROMEO AND JULIET 24

By permission of W. M. Rossetti, Esq.
FREDERICK SANDYS

-^MEDEA ........ 56

VIVIEN 58

MORGAN LE FAY . . . . . .60

By permission of the Artist and of E. Meredith
Cr6,sse> Esq. From photographs by F. Hollyer
W, BELL SCOTT

THE EVE OF THE DELUGE 98

From the painting in the National Gallery of
British Art

xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BYAM SHAW PAGE

LOVE'S BAUBLES ... .116

From the painting in the Walker Art Gallery ',

Liverpool
THE BOER WAR, 1900 . . . 116

By permission of the Artist
FREDERIC SHIELDS

JONAH • 94

From the painting in tlu Chapel of the Annunci-
ation. By permission of the Artist
SIMEON SOLOMON

DAWN ..... 62

By permission of H. Boddington, Esq.

AMOR SACRAMENTUM 64

Fom a photogaph by F. Hollyer
LOVE IN AUTUMN .... .64

By permission of W. Coltart, Esq.
SPENCER STANHOPE

THE WATERS OF LETHE 108

From the painting in the City Art Gallery,
Manchester

VENUS RISING FROM THE: SEA . . . . IO8

By permission of W. Connal, Esq.
MARIE S. STILLMAN

"UPON A DAY CAME SORROW UNTO ME" . .112
MESSER ANSALDO SHOWING MADONNA DIANOVA
HIS ENCHANTED GARDEN . . . .112

By permission of the Artist
G. A. STOREY, A.R.A.

THE ANNUNCIATION . 86

By permission of the Artist
J. M. STRUDWICK

"THE GENTLE Music OF A BYEGONE DAY" no

By permission of J. Dixon, Esq.

THE RAMPARTS OF GOD'S HOUSE . . .110
By permission of W. Imrie, Esq.

ISABELLA no

By permission of W. Graham Robertson^ Esq,

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix

JAMES TISSOT PAGE

THE CONVALESCENT . ... 90

By permission of Mr Thomas McLean
HENRY WALLIS

CHATTERTON 84

From the painting in the National Gallery of

British Art
W. J. WEBBE

LAMBS AT PLAY 82

By permission of G. H. Tucker, Esq.
GEORGE WILSON

ASIA 66

By permission of Halsey Ricardo, Esq*
THE SQNG OF THE NIGHTINGALE ... 68

By permission of Dr John Todhunter
W. L WINDXUS

BURD HELEN 74

From a photograph by Caswall Smith

Too LATE 80

By permission of Andrew Bain, Esq.

W. HOLMAN HUNT

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE
PAINTERS

CHAPTER I

THE FORMATION OF THE PRE-RAPHAELITE
BROTHERHOOD

IT was in the year 1848 that a young student at the
Royal Academy antique schools, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
by name, who had previously studied at Gary's Drawing
Academy (otherwise Sass's), impatient of the somewhat
tedious routine and the length of time that must elapse
before he could pass in the ordinary course of events
to the painting school, and, it may well be, a little
contemptuous of the instructors into whose hands he
would fall when he reached that bourne, wrote to an older
artist, Ford Madox Brown, asking to be received as a
pupil. He was then an impetuous youth, full of ideas
and dreams, and ambitious of realising them on canvas,
seeking to learn the technique of his art, desirous of
passing from the drudgery of the drawing school, which
wearied and seemed to fetter him, to the acquisition of
brushwork and the power to use colour ; and he turned
to an artist, his senior, but himself a young man, with
whom he was not acquainted, but whose cartoons shown
at Westminster Hall in 1844 and 1845 had produced on
him a deep impression by reason of their great power
A

2 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

and originality, an impression which the Parisina and
the Execution of Mary Queen of Scots had afterwards
deepened and confirmed.

In the letter sent to Madox Brown, a letter memorable
by virtue of the great results that were later to accrue
from it, Rossetti spoke in highly laudatory terms of the
work of the painter whose pupil he sought to be (neither
then nor later did he mince matters or measure his words
in allotting either praise or blame) ; and the recipient,
unaccustomed to such praise, and half-suspicious of an
ill-timed jest, provided himself, it is said, with a stout
stick and called at Rossetti's house to see his would-be
pupil. However, the dread of being made the butt of
an impertinent hoax was groundless : Rossetti was
thoroughly earnest and enthusiastic in his desire to
learn. Madox Brown at once accepted him as a scholar,
and the meeting laid the foundations of a personal
friendship destined to produce the most momentous
results in the world of art. In fact, it was this friendship,
which lasted until severed by death, and the teaching and
influence of the elder artist — one of the most strongly
original of painters — which confirmed the younger in the
independent views he even then took of art, and the
militant spirit he so soon displayed in propounding his
opinions.

Other friendships, almost equally far-reaching in their
results, had commenced earlier, William Holman Hunt
and Rossetti being acquaintances at the Academy schools.
A third student, an intimate of Hunt's, and soon to be
equally an intimate of Rossetti's, was John Everett
Millais. At this time both Hunt and Millais, though
students, had exhibited pictures of recognised merit, and
were far in advance of Rossetti in all technical matters.
The counsel and example of Hunt, and the brilliant
achievements of Millais, went far to reconcile Rossetti to

FORMATION OF THE BROTHERHOOD 3

the drudgery that was so uncongenial to him, and to spur
him on to steady and careful work along the lines laid
down by Madox Brown. It was the association of these
three lads — Hunt being twenty-one, Rossetti twenty, and
Millais nineteen in 1848 — that was to result in the most
important art movement of modern England, a wave of
freshness and enthusiasm that, like the ripples caused by
the stone flung into the water, spread and grew, and
quivered and quickened, in so many and such divers ways
that none shall say at any definite point this was the
limit, and here the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites
snded.

And, taken together, what supreme qualifications these
three had ! Rossetti, an ardent proselytiser, full of
dreams and desires, dowered with the poet's soul, loving
intensely and appreciating keenly all striving after the
true and the beautiful, and gifted with that wonderful
power of infusing his own enthusiasm into others that
marks the born leader of men : Hunt, self-contained and
fervent, hard-working, and strongly desirous of notable
and original achievement : Millais, the marvel and shining
light of the schools, already a successful artist, conscious,
may be, of powers within him far in advance of many who
sat in the high places of art, and full of the ambition of
genius : this surely was a memorable coterie ! What
wonder that the constant companionship of these three,
ttn imagination of Rossetti, the sturdy self-reliance of
Hunt, and the technical knowledge of Millais, acting and
reacting on each other, infusing into this one poetic
insight, and encouraging that other to toil, resulted later
in the production from their brushes of masterpieces
instinct with life, full of beauty and thought in
conception, and sincere and true in execution ; pictures
whose existence was a protest against the flimsy
banalities that were the outcome of the art of the day.

4 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

But it must not be forgotten, when one comes to
consider what the movement was that these artists
inaugurated, what the tenets were upon which they
based their crusade, that Rossetti the dreamer, and
through him Hunt the reformer and Millais the
executant, were strongly influenced by the thought and
the personality of Ford Madox Brown. His feeling was
that art was moribund in the cage of convention ; that
the systematic generalisation of rules of art was utterly
pernicious ; that the contrary course of minute research
into individual facts was imperative ; and that when
painting, a picture of incident, instead of thinking how the
picture would compose best and look pretty, the artist
should consider how the action probably took place in
reality. This was the artistic creed that he consistently
followed through a long and laborious life — the gospel
that he practised long before the others began to preach
it. He it was who, cognisant of the beauty of a simple
and primitive school of pictorial presentment that was
based on loving study of actuality and not on the cold
convention of classic tradition, drifted into archaism as
a man yields to fate : who, seeing the falsity and futility
of the art of the period, had already struck out for
himself an original line of work in which was noticeable
an endeavour after truer light and shade (differentiating,
for instance, night and morning, indoor and outdoor
effects) and a desire for the absolute verisimilitude and
dramatic presentment of fact, something apart from the
petty trivialities of the prevalent story-picture or the
theatrical display of the "grand style."

Madox Brown was at an early stage (in fact, it might
be said, throughout his career) strongly influenced by
Holbein, and later the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel
at Florence confirmed him in his admiration and
appreciation of the heartfelt seriousness and high

FORMATION OF THE BROTHERHOOD 5

ndeavour of the early masters, both Italian and
rlemish — often naive in their presentment of fact, but
Iways sincere ; often painting with unnatural hardness,
ut always with loving care. He it was who pointed
Tit to Rossetti the charm that lies in their work, the
race and decorative beauty, and the tender and careful
ainting displayed in their panels and canvases. One
an imagine how such seed once sown flourished in the
ongenial soil of Rossetti's mind, already quickening with

contempt of the artistic cant of the day, when all men
mcied they could be Leonardos or Raphaels, heedless
rhether they possessed or lacked Leonardo's stupendous
enius or Raphael's mighty power ; the cant which
nplied that by a mere routine study of classic tradition
ainters could be turned out from the schools to rival the
reatest masters of the past — the pernicious idea, which
xisted rather as an accepted axiom than as an avowed
octrine, that art could be learned by rote, and painters
quipped to produce masterpieces by the application of
:hool precepts, whether they possessed souls to conceive
nd hands to compass, or whether they were as little
Dgnisant of poetry and truth and beauty as they were
1-equipped in matters of execution and style.

Of course all art was not so debased at this time — it
mst not for a moment be forgotten that there were
ainters of noble aim and fine achievement ; but these
rere the exceptions, and the average art of the exhibitions
ras commonplace in the extreme, based on the con-
entions of the schools and not on the verities of Nature,
nd for the most part unadorned with any grace of style
r fervour of imagination. It was this inadequacy of
lotive and convention of treatment that the minds of
le artists soon to be known as the Pre-Raphaelite
irotherhood contemned. Rossetti was fired to rebel
gainst the flimsy unreality then rampant, not only by

6 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Madox Brown's example, but by the discovery in <
manuscript by William Blake of the most outspoken (anc
maybe largely nonsensical) strictures upon many grea
artists, "any men whom Blake regarded as fulsomeh
florid, or lax, or swamping ideas in mere manipulation "
and when he and Hunt and Millais, meeting one nigh
at the house of the latter, found Lasinio's book o
engravings of the frescoes at the Campo Santo a
Pisa, their enthusiasm was kindled and their vagu<
desires took form — for the art before them was simpl<
and sincere, not the product of lifeless dogmas, bu
the result of reverent study ; and they saw in it, o:
thought they saw, aspiration and not decline, imperfection:
maybe, but not the corruption of decay, and above al
it was, as Ruskin later said, "eternally and unalterabl}
true."

So an artistic brotherhood was formed to put intc
practice the enthusiasms and the dreams which wen
crystallised in the minds of the three by the chanct
sight of this book of engravings, and the nam<
"Pre-Raphaelite" adopted as a distinctive appellation
But, as Holman Hunt has well put it, " neither then noi
afterwards did they affirm that there was not mud:
healthy and good art after the time of Raphael ; but i
appeared to them that afterwards art was so frequentl)
tainted with the canker of corruption that it was only ir
the earlier work they could find with certainty absolute
health. Up to a definite point the tree was healthy
above it disease began, side by side with life then
appeared death."

These three then were the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood ; later, others were enlisted, Thomas Woolner
sculptor; James Collinson, painter (who retired later
and whose place was filled by Walter Howell Deverell,
painter); Frederick George Stephens, then painter, now

FORMATION OF THE BROTHERHOOD 7

the doyen of art critics ; and William Michael Rossetti,
younger brother of Dante Rossetti, also critic and poet ;
and though Ford Madox Brown declined the invitation
to join the society, simply on the ground that his sturdy
and independent spirit had no faith in coteries, he still
worked, as he had already done, along the same lines
is they did, and probably with a much clearer knowledge
ind a much more settled view of what he sought. In
:act, though Rossetti was the founder, if founder there
yere (primus inter pares would better express the
position) of the Brotherhood as a society, of Pre-
Raphaelism as a living force, Madox Brown was
ndubitably the originator, though, of course, he
brmulated no name to his creed, disliking "to deal in
vatchwords over-much."

It is true that afterwards, by Rossetti and Woolner,
is well as by Madox Brown, the Brotherhood was treated
is a mere boyish league, a piece of youthful camaraderie ;
md though in later years these artists may have seemed
i little ashamed of the fresh enthusiasms and lofty aims
:hat they so valiantly strove to realise, at the time there
s no doubt that each and all were keenly in earnest,
md certainly the awkward word " Pre-Raphaelite," which
hey coined, has so long been accepted as the appellation
>f their school and the tradition that has succeeded
hem, and has so entirely passed into the language
vith this arbitrary significance, that it would be vain to
ittempt now to substitute any more accurate or more
expressive term.

It should perhaps be noted here, that in later days the
expression " Pre-Raphaelite " came to have a second
neaning, apart from that originally intended by the
nembers of the Brotherhood. They meant to express
>y the word the qualities of sincerity and directness, of
lonesty and definite inspiration, which they discerned in

8 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

the work of the early Italian painters ; afterwards the
public, who came to associate the term largely with the
little-seen later work of Rossetti, applied it to his pictures
and those of Burne-Jones, ignoring the earlier meaning
of the word, and using it to denote the eclectic and poetic
school of which those painters were the founders, and of
which their work is the highest achievement. With this
double sense the word exists, and with this twofold
meaning it may be accepted, inasmuch as the later
tradition was derived from the more mature development
in the style of these two artists, who were originally
Pre-Raphaelites in the stricter sense.

The formation of the Brotherhood linked these young
artists closely and intimately together ; living in each
other's companionship, constantly meeting with open
hearts together, they talked and aspired and dreamed and
wrought in high endeavour ; and though much has been
said and written as to their artistic beliefs, and though a
good deal of misapprehension exists as to their aims
and the methods they advocated, as a matter of fact their
whole creed might almost be summed up in one word,
for the keystone of the doctrines that they attempted to
preach by word and deed was simply SINCERITY. Mr
Michael Rossetti enunciates the bond of union between
them very clearly and concisely : he says " it was
simply this :

" I. — To have genuine ideas to express ;

II. — To study Nature attentively, so as to know how

to express them ;
III. — To sympathise with what is direct and serious

and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion *

of what is conventional and self-parading

and learned by rote ; and
IV. — Most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly

good pictures and statues."

FORMATION OF THE BROTHERHOOD 9

This is the sober fact of the matter ; and all the ideas
ibout a mere attempted revival of meclisevalism, the
iccessity of accepting and depicting everything seen,
selecting and rejecting nothing, and the imperative
/alue of hard and laborious handling were but outside
news of their opinions, travesties of their return to
Mature and a healthy early art as her interpreter, and of
:heir desire to paint with studious care and exactitude,
vhich were foisted upon the public as the be-all and end-
ill of their aims by those who failed to see the motives
mderlying everything they did. Doubtless, carried
iway by enthusiasm, they hampered themselves, as young
nen will do, especially in the heat of argument, by
promulgating dogmas not sufficiently thought out, by
idvancing theories on the spur of the moment, and it is
imall wonder that, tired of the threadbare pretensions
ind bombastic creed of many of the painters of the day,
hey went to extremes, deeming with Browning " One
nust be fanatic, Be a wedge, a thunderbolt," to move
he world.

But the statement has been often made, and may as
veil be once more controverted, that the Pre-Raphaelites
:laimed as essential that the characteristics of a model
ihould be copied implicitly, no deviation being permitted
o suit the character of the picture ; but though they
loubtless thought that the most faithful reproduction of
Mature was essential in art which purported to be a
epresentation of fact, they did not think that this
ihould debar them from exercising the artist's choice,
md departing, when the subject demanded such
leparture, from the features of a model — e.g. in the
)icture which Millais painted as a practical exposition
)f their views, Lorenzo at the House of Isabella, the head
)f Lorenzo was painted from William Michael Rossetti,
nit the hair was made golden instead of black ; and

io ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Rossetti, painting the Virgin Mary in the same year from
his sister, also made a similar variation. What they did
seek and claim as essential was truth of presentment,
verisimilitude of representation in every way, and though
they endeavoured to attain this by scrupulous fidelity in
matters of detail, and by close elaboration in painting,
to say that they were slaves to microscopic copying is
both inaccurate and misleading ; for, as has been
authoritatively stated by Holman Hunt, although they
deemed such care in painting good and useful for a
student's training, they would never have admitted that
the relinquishing of this habit of work by a matured
painter would make him less of a Pre-Raphaelite.

It was in the following year, 1849, that these firstfruits
of the Brotherhood were exhibited. The members set
to work, eager to produce pictures which should embody
and shadow forth their aims, and Millais, Rossetti, Hunt,
and Collinson each showed in the spring exhibitions oi
that year a work remarkable in every way, a group
especially noteworthy when considered as the achieve-
ment of such youthful artists. All the pictures appeared
with the mystic letters " P.-R.B." appended to the painters'
signatures ; Rossetti contributing the Girlhood of Mary
Virgin to the Free Exhibition ; and Hunt's Rienzi
swearing Revenge over his Brother's Corpse, and Millais's
Lorenzo at the House of Isabella, being hung on
the walls of the Royal Academy. Each work was well
hung, well received, and (further mark of appreciation)
promptly sold ; while the criticisms in the reviews were
not merely tolerant, but almost enthusiastic, the " Times"
devoting two columns of comment to the works by
Millais and Hunt as the remarkable feature of the
exhibition, and the "Athenaeum" speaking in the most
laudatory terms of Rossetti's panel.

It was in the next year, when the meaning of the

IS

s :s

$

FORMATION OF THE BROTHERHOOD 11

itials, "P.-R.B." attached to the signatures became
icwn (they were ignored or overlooked on the first
:casion), and when it was seen that a group of young
en had banded themselves together in defiance of
tablished rules, daring to think independently, to doubt
e value of much that was universally accepted as good
t, and working boldly in contravention of accepted
nons, that the storm burst ; and from press and
iblic, artist and layman, abuse and obloquy of the
ost virulent kind were poured forth, unmeasured
dignation and horror expressed, — their work con-
firmed as shameful and preposterous, iniquitous, and
famous, mere catchpenny charlatanism being the least
il attributed to them, and an attempted subversion of
I right principles of art the lightest charge laid to their
>ors. Small encouragement to honest aim this ! But
is amusing now to note, what was pretty patent at the
ne, that the kindly and encouraging attention paid to
eir work as that of young men of promise became
Langed to such violence of attack when it was seen that
ey actually dared to think on independent lines, and to
it their heretical and unorthodox views into practice. It
pretty evident, in looking back, that personal animosity
is the cause of the condemnation of their work in
[50 and 1851, better work than that of 1849, and lacking
e minor crudities and imperfections incidental to early
tempts ; and it was only when an independent and
mest critic appeared, and John Ruskin wrote an
ipreciative notice, that any attempt was made to
asp their endeavour, or to search for any truth that
ight underlie their heterodoxy.

It has been frequently stated that the Pre-Raphaelite
rotherhood owed its existence to Mr Ruskin, that the
tists who banded themselves together under that name
2re his disciples, and that it was the reading of his

I4 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

the work of many artists, outside the Brotherhood, who
during the whole or a portion of their careers have
worked under the spell of Pre-Raphaelism, to show
how far-reaching has been the influence of the movement.
There are many painters whose accomplishment is as
beautiful and as sincere as that of the originators of the
cult, and who may be considered if not as members of
a school, certainly as co-workers, with the same simple
and lofty ambition ; and though these may have been
overshadowed in the past by their more prominent
confreres, a glance at the illustrations in the following
pages will show something of the beauty and charm
they have infused into many masterpieces which are
unknown outside a small, no matter how choice, circle
of sympathisers.

But to one who is an ardent lover of such genuine
endeavour after truth and beauty, poetry and passion
in art as the Pre-Raphaelite movement inaugurated
nearly fifty years ago, it is a matter for question whether
there are rising around us the young men to carry on the
tradition. It is true that there are those among the
younger artists who paint under the Pre-Raphaelite
influence, but of the beautiful creations recorded and
alluded to in these pages by much the larger portion is
the achievement of the elder men, men who are — one
is thankful to say — still among us, but who may not,
one fears, leave worthy successors behind them. We
have no Rossetti to-day, only imitators of his manner-
isms ; no youth to paint, as young Millais did, such
pictures as Mariana in the Moated Grange and The
Proscribed Royalist ; to-day followers of the school are
too often mere decorators, or mere echoes of the greater
souls sooner or later to pass from us. Holman Hunt is
with us, and Frederick Sandys, and there are others;
but where are the young men to whom the lighted

FORMATION OF THE BROTHERHOOD 15

mp might be handed, and who would guard and
lerish it? We have artists who can paint as closely
i ever Hunt and Millais did, but can they give us the
iul that there is in such a picture as Sir Isumbras at
e FordJ We have men who do not hesitate to use,
id abuse, all the resources of the pigment-maker, but
tio paints to-day with the jewel-like brilliance and
stre of Rossetti ? Posers we have who prate of line
id colour, but they neglect the thought, the poetry,
at must pervade all art that is to be noble, and are
ere blind producers of artificial medisevalism, quaint
id pretty, but how lacking in the spirit of old romance
at shines from the work of Frederic Sandys, the
nderness and sweetness that fill the pictures of Arthur
ughes ! It is saddening to think that though we search,
* search in vain among the pictures of to-day for the
>ly simplicity of the Ecce Ancilla Domini^ the pure
ty of the Donna delta Finestra, the tragic grandeur

Medea, the absolute and unshrinking veracity of the
tone Breaker: the achievement we find is just what
e great men of the movement managed to avoid, a
Ise mediaevalism of form and treatment, a soulless
ideavou;- to be decorative. It almost seems that the
ider the ripples flow the weaker they are, and that
.ough the Gothic feeling which prompted the crusade
jainst classic conventionality survives, the poetic and
•mantic spirit that made the Pre-Raphaelite art of
>sterday a living art, an art to move the soul, has not
ascended to those who attempt to follow in the footsteps
" the leaders.

But it may be, and one hopes that it is so, that one
ils to find so readily the coming work because it is
/ershadowed by the productions of the great ones who
•e still in our midst, or who have only recently ceased
om among us ; and it may also be, and this is probable,

16 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

that the Pre-Raphaelite movement has extended,
recognised or unrecognised, so far, and succeeded so
well in killing the falsity it was a protest against, that
there is no longer the background of banality against
which the firstfruits of the crusade shone out so clearly.
Perhaps, too, it is not altogether loss, that the arts of
design far and wide should receive some of the impulse
that has done so much for pictorial art ; still one would
sacrifice much in other directions to see on our gallery
walls such work as The Two Gentlemen of Verona^ from
the easel of a young man of twenty-four.

CHAPTER II
HE FOUNDER OF PRE-RAPHAELISM:

FORD MADOX BROWN

kOME two years before the death of Ford Madox
'Brown, a number of artists and admirers, recognising
t during a long and laborious life this great painter had
eived no official recognition, subscribed the sum of
oo, and commissioned him to paint a picture to

presented to the National Gallery, which should
;quately represent his work, and should be a fit
morial of his genius. Such a commission was
ibably unique, — certainly it conveyed to the artist
:ompliment and an appreciation of the highest kind ;
1 one can only regret that, dying in 1893, the work
ich he undertook in acceptance of this commission
> never finished : the striking and powerful canvas
ich now hangs in our National Gallery as an example
his style, " Christ washing Peter's Feet" being one of

earlier works.

?or fifty years Madox Brown laboured quietly and
adily, producing masterpiece after masterpiece, unrecog-
sd as a great artist either by the press or the public,
cnown even to a large number of the supposed cogno-
iti of the day, content to go his way in peace ; pained
haps that honest attempt and great achievement alike
>uld be so little welcomed, but absolutely incapable of

personal "puff" and glaring self-advertisement that
the bane of art nowadays, and thoroughly disdainful

B

18 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

of all such artifices. It was as a mere child that he first
evinced the artistic bent which was the foreshadowing of
his future eminence ; and his father, recognising his
ability, placed him first under Professor Gregorius at
Bruges, then under Van Hanselaer of Ghent, and finally
entered him at the Academy at Antwerp, at that time
directed by Baron Wappers. It was here that he became
thoroughly equipped as regards technical knowledge,
obtaining a mastery over all and sundry processes of
art which enabled him later to accomplish notable work
alike in oils and fresco, water-colour and encaustic
painting.

Early in his career after leaving Antwerp he sojourned
in Paris, and to his arduous labours there, while studying
at the Louvre and drawing from the life, he probably
owed that knowledge of style which is apparent in his
work. It was at this date that he painted, influenced
doubtless by Delacroix, the powerful picture, Parisina's
Sleepy which was shown at the British Institution in
1845, and attracted the notice of Rossetti ; later he
developed his more mature and independent style, and
began to put in practice the system of accurate and
veracious presentment of light and shade that he had
worked out for himself, in contradistinction to the preva-
lent artificial studio lighting — differentiating indoor and
outdoor effects, morning and afternoon lights, and so on.
The pictures which he painted upon his return to
England, such as the portrait known as A Modern Holbein,
had all the finish and fidelity of expression which were
the characteristics of his matured style. After three
years' stay in Paris, he went to Rome, impelled by
anxiety for the health of his young wife ; but his stay
was brief, some nine months in all, though fruitful in
matters of art. It was at Rome and Florence that the
beauties of the Italian masters, early and late, now first

FORD MADOX BROWN 19

revealed to him, had a great effect upon his mind,
sing new possibilities into his hopes and dreams,
widening and deepening his sympathies and aims,
the health of his invalid wife did not improve ; and,
ous to gratify her, he hastened to bring her home to
country she longed for but did not live to see, for
died in Paris on the journey between station and
on.

nd so the bereaved artist settled in England in 1846,
oughly equipped and accomplished, and proceeded
aint steadily and well, sending picture after picture to
Royal Academy, but always to meet with some
tt, something to irritate him and confirm him in his
empt of all cliques and corporations. Sometimes
pictures were unhung, sometimes skied, sometimes
bited without the appropriate frame ; and finally,
itisfied in every way with the treatment accorded

he decided no longer to exhibit at the Academy,
n his boyhood enamoured of labour, the amount of
: he completed was stupendous, and it would be
:>ssible to give here a catalogue of his pictures, to say
ting of his numerous cartoons for frescoes, stained
3, and other styles of decorative art ; but among his
luctions, while steadily working in quiet, and gradually
ining a clientele of purchasers, were such fine and
:h-making canvases as Our Lady of Good Children
.8), the tragic Cordelia and Lear (1849), Chaucer
'ing the Legend of Constance (1851), and in the same

Pretty Baa Lambs, a picture which shows that if
teachings of Madox Brown influenced the young
ts of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, their love of
uteness of realisation reacted on the older artist,
ir, Christ washing Peter's Feet, Cordelia's Portion,
% Renews Honeymoon, the magnificent Work (now

of the gems of the Manchester public collection),

20 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Romeo and Juliet, a masterpiece of emotional directness,
Cromwell at St Ives, The Last of England (now at
Birmingham), and many other grand pictures were con-
ceived and completed ; and in more recent years he
was the creator of an unique series of thoughtful and
accomplished works in the frescoes which decorate the
Manchester Town Hall, panels in which the artist
has realised with equal genius the aspect of the remote
centuries in The Romans building Mancunium, and The
Expulsion of the Danes, and has depicted with dramatic
veracity such incidents of later days as Dalton collecting
Marsh Gas, and The Transit of Venus.

These mural paintings are perhaps his best-known
works, but it is scarcely by these that his achievement
should be judged ; for they were produced under con-,
ditions and limitations imposed by the necessity of the
Gambier-Parry process, which precluded the possibility
of their being so individually characteristic as some of
his work in other mediums. Possibly if one were asked
for the finest example, the most complete and successful
realisation of his aims, The Last of England, would be the
picture to rise to the mind's eye. This work was first
conceived on the occasion of a visit to Gravesend in 1851,
to bid farewell to Woolner, the sculptor, then on his way
to Australia ; and as Madox Brown was contemplating a
voyage to India, the idea appealed to him of realising
on canvas the pathos and emotion of such a setting out
into a new world. So he painted himself, his wife, and
their little baby as emigrants — the wife full of sadness,
gazing her last on the loved shore of the old country,
while the tiny baby-hand clasps hers in the same uncon-
cious loving trust that prompts her to hold her husband's,
strengthening and consoling him in his hour of grief,
maybe of failure ; while the man's face, though doubting
and questioning, is full of that strength which shall make

•s

FORD MADOX BROWN

CHAUCER AT THE COURT OF EDWARD III

FORD MADOX BROWN 21

the master of his fate wherever duty leads him.
ivious of the drizzling spray and the rout of shouting
w-passengers, they sit overcome by the flood of
gled thought that surges over them. Such is the
are, one of the masterpieces of English art, wrought

loving care, for "to ensure the peculiar look of
t all round which objects have on a dull day at sea,
is painted for the most part in the open air on dull
j, and, when the flesh was being painted, on cold
>." So wrote the artist, and he added, " absolutely,
out regard to the art of any period or country, I have
I to render this scene as it would appear. The
ateness of detail which would be visible under such
litions of broad daylight I have thought necessary to
ate, as bringing the pathos of the subject more home
tie beholder."

rhat care and zeal in order to be sure that everything
bsolutely right and true ! And as in this instance
artist depicted the shuddering bleakness of a grey

at sea, so in other works he realizes the true
:>undings of his drama : here showing the beauty of
nlight as in The Corsair, or sunlight as in The Widow's
; there the glamour of dawn as in Romeo and Juliet ',
le sombre dimness of a dungeon as in Foscari.
\ another masterpiece, Work, may be noted the same
essful grappling with the endeavour to paint things
ley are seen — the stress and heat of a blazing July
is actuality itself, the presentment both of the fact

the lesson to be drawn from it is dramatic yet
rained, and the whole composition is a poem that he

runs may read, full of the dignity of labour, the
:hiness of toil

" which beads the brow, and tans the flesh
Of lusty manhood, casting out its devils ! "

22 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

This chef d'ceuvre has been well characterised as "ii
colour, a cut open jewel ; in meaning, a sermon an<
a hymn of praise ; in conception, the offspring of a bii
brain ; in execution, the product of a master's hand
The magnificence of gesture alone in the main group c
workmen — the navvies — stamps the composition as th
work of a great artist ; and its multiplicity of inciden
and meaning, the elaboration of the composition, th
novelty of the subject, and the completion, intellects
and artistic, of its rendering are all entirely admirable.
It is in such work as this that we have the highest fruit
of the artist's passionate hopes and lofty devotion to th
ideal he set before himself.

When, a century hence, some great and discriminatin,
critic shall arise to write the record of art in England i
the latter half of the nineteenth century — one of the mos
interesting periods in artistic history — it is a truisrr
maybe, to say that many accepted reputations will be a
pricked bubbles, while others at present obscured wi
shine out more brightly than they do to-day ; but it i
safe to prophesy that in the latter category will be foun
the name of Madox Brown. Just how great he was, jus
where he will be placed in the hierarchy of painters, on
cannot say ; but certainly future generations will appre
ciate, and ever see more clearly, the honest independenc
of thought, the wide and kindly human sympathies, th
great originality, the wondrous power of poetic an
dramatic presentment, and the mastery over colour tha
characterises his pictures. It is quite true that in som
of his immature works the colouring has been criticise
as inharmonious ; that there is an inclination to ovei
emphasise, to exaggeration, in much of his work ; tha
many fine compositions are marred by bizarrerie c
gesture amounting almost to distortion ; and in so fa
as he often sacrificed grace in his desire for the forcibl

FORD MADOX BROWN

ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW'S SON

FORD MADOX BROWN

KING RENE'S HONEYMOON

FORD MADOX BROWN 23

resentation of dramatic action, he fell short of his high
il : but there are many pictures that are free from
nish, pictures such as have been mentioned, palpitat-

with intense thought and feeling and admirable in
icity and power, redolent of largeness of conception

virility of style and handling, as well as of feeling for
>ur, which surely rank among the finest of the genera-
It is by these that he must be judged, and one
not but think that the verdict of future generations

place him among the great ones of art, deeming him

painter of supreme dramatic power, the artist who
LS pierced to the heart of deep emotions, and conceived
us the very aspect of great deeds."
[o notice of Madox Brown, however brief, would be
tplete which did not include an allusion to the accom-
hed attainment of his daughters, Mrs Hueffer and
i W. M. Rossetti, and the dawning genius of his son
/er. Dying — "untimely lost" — at the age of nine-
i, the latter was already a poet and novelist of great
rer and still greater promise, and the artist of many
:iful and deeply imaginative compositions ; and no
i may say what a heart-breaking blow his death was
lis father, or what a stupendous loss to the world,
'he work of both Mrs Hueffer and Mrs Rossetti is
ible for charm and distinction, the portraits and fancy
ds of the former, and especially the subject pictures
:he latter, being remarkable in a high degree. Such
vings as the Romeo and Juliet or The Duet (which
ite Rossetti characterised as a really perfect picture)
full of thought, full of the very soul of the artist ; and
jgh in her work one can trace the influence both of

father and her brother-in-law, there is an added
rm beyond the beauty of presentation or the poetry
olour, the individual charm of a sweet and strong soul
; saw with the perception of genius and drew with the

24 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

tenderness of an artist who strove to make a picture
as has been well said, "the exact and beautiful expression
of a thing for ever." To dismiss such work with so few
words of appreciation is to treat it in an admittedly
inadequate fashion, but in so brief a review space forbids
a more extended allusion.

CHAPTER III
FHE STAUNCH PRE-RAPHAELITE:

HOLMAN HUNT

early days of Holman Hunt, as of many an artist,
were days of long-continued struggle with adverse and
ropitiatory circumstances. The first cause of dis-
"tenment lay in the objection his father entertained
tis following his natural bent and entering upon the
er of a painter ; the second came when, an unwilling
sent being given by his parent, the uphill task lay
>re the young artist of making money enough to afford
his daily bread.

.t a very early age he was sent into the city to earn
living, and to get the artistic craze driven out of his
i : but, curiously enough, in each of the two offices
uccessively entered he found a chance encouragement
i the first from his employer, an auctioneer of artistic
:livities, who sympathised with a congenial spirit
sad of instilling commercial principles into him ; and
r from a fellow-clerk, who designed patterns and
rht young Hunt what he could. During this time,
lis father's opposition did not go so far as absolute
libition, all his slender earnings were expended in
ing for tuition in oil painting, until at last he broke
and entered upon a definite course of artistic study,
pite of his parent's refusal to countenance or assist
such undertaking. Dark days ensued, three days a
k he painted portraits, copied pictures, or did any-

26 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

thing whereby he might earn a slender livelihood ; the
other days he spent in study at the British Museum,
endeavouring to qualify for the Royal Academy schools.
In this attempt he failed more than once, but finally was
admitted ; and here among his fellow-students were
Millais and Rossetti, with whom an intimacy ensued,
culminating, as we have seen, in the formation of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Already, in his student days, the force of circumstances
had developed in Holman Hunt a remarkable power of
patient work, and a definite and concentrated aim, while
he had also acquired a desire for precision of touch, and
a distaste for all loose, vague, irresponsible handling.
These qualities were among those cherished by the
Brotherhood, and these very qualities which marked the
young student mark the accomplished artist to-day : in
fact he was, and is, by far the most consistent and con-
stant Pre-Raphaelite, still remaining true to the artistic
beliefs of his youth. In his later works, as in his less
mature pictures, we find to the full the characteristics of
the Pre-Raphaelite creed ; alike in The Hireling Shepherd
and the Christ among the Doctors are displayed the same
loving care and patience lavished on the execution of the
work, and the same endeavour to pourtray things as they
actually are, to realise the scene depicted ; while in these,
and notably in others such as The Light of the World
and The Shadow of the Cross, are seen the qualities
more individual to Holman Hunt than his confreres — the
strong religious feeling and complete and carefully
thought-out symbolism which pervade the whole work,
at the same time as the detail beloved by the school is
everywhere used to accentuate the principal motive of the
picture, and to exhibit and enforce the moral aim that to
this painter, as to Ruskin, seemed the imperative duty
of an artist.

o

*:§

«.

W. HOLMAN HUNT

THE AWAKENED CONSCIENCE

HOLMAN HUNT 27

In the early days of his career it was indeed fortunate
at he possessed such a self-centred mind and so keen
d indefatigable a power of toil, for the first and many
cceeding pictures that he exhibited after the foundation

the Brotherhood were the objects of contempt and
/ilement of every description. The Rienzi vowing
wgeance over the Body of his Brother certainly had
ilts of crudeness and hardness, blemishes incidental to
* work of an artist who lacked the training of experi-
ce ; but these disappeared in the work of a few years
:er, such as The Hireling Shepherd and The Two
mtlemen of Verona (both painted in 1851), which
:tfacted the notice and inspired the championship of
hn Ruskin. The former picture is so characteristic
at it may be taken as typical of Holman Hunt's
:hnique and of his constant endeavour to use art as a
>ans of presenting a moral and spiritual thought,
le artist shows a shepherd kneeling and talking to a
:1, and leaving his sheep to stray to their ruin. She
s a tame lamb in her lap, but knows so little how to
re for it that she is feeding it with unripe apples,
owing herself a type of those careless daughters who
ike unmotherly mothers and unwomanly women. Some

the neglected sheep have already crossed a little
•earn, and are in the midst of the corn ; with no one to
)k after them, and temptation lying so near, they
turally follow their own ruinous instincts. And a
uble peril awaits them, for not only will they perish

surfeiting on the green corn, but the wolf is already

sight, and has sprung upon some of their strayed
mpanions ; while their guardian, careless of their
Ifare, is catching insects to amuse his companion, and
5 weak and superstitious nature is frightened when he
ds his capture is a death's-head moth. Throughout
s artist insists on the sinfulness of dereliction of duty,

28 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

and enforces the lesson by displaying its dire con
sequences ; while the whole picture is a gem of veracit}
in its studious rendering of trees and sheep, and summe
sunshine and shadow.

From the time that Ruskin proclaimed the beauty am
interpreted the aim of his work, the artist's reputatioi
has been a constant and increasing one ; for though thi
sum-total of his achievement is not large, owing t<
the deep thought and tender patience exercised on even
canvas that has come from his easel, the character o
his pictures is so unique and distinguished as to maki
each one linger in the memory of every person who ha
seen them. The Hireling Shepherd was followed by ;
work of a similar aim, The Awakened Conscience ; late
came The Strayed Sheep ; and then the religious tendency
of the artist's mind, already shown in A Converted Britis>
Family sheltering a Missionary, prompted the stupendou
achievement of the well-known Light of the World. Th
success of that great allegory led to the artist's first so
journ in the East, and the fruits of more than one lonj
stay among Biblical scenes and surroundings may b
seen in the many subjects that he has painted, inspire<
by Holy Writ ; The Scapegoat, The Finding of th
Saviour in the Temple, The Afterglow, The Shadow o
Death, The Plains of Esdraelon, The Triumph of th
Innocents, and other well-known pictures owe thei
inception to the artist's deep religious feeling, and thei
marvellous completeness of pourtrayal and symbolisn
to the unwearying conscientiousness that lavished tim
and trouble on them. More than this, the artist ha
accomplished a noble achievement by illustrating th'
history of Christianity among all its actual surroundings
so far as they can be recalled or reproduced, an<
realising for ever the actual aspect of the scenes as the;
were.

HOLMAN HUNT 29

Among other works, as fully informed with thought
id zeal, are The Marriage of the Prince of Wales, The
hip, the Portrait of Sir Richard Owen, Amaryllis, and
fay-day on Magdalen Tower, and in each and every
le the artist is revealed, as a French critic well said, as
la conscience fait peintre." He is admittedly the master
" definite presentment, and in almost all his work we
id (as has been said before), not only the artist striving
» depict the actuality of things, but the teacher aiming
• inculcate a moral lesson ; and though to many an
Imirer the paintings that are entirely the outcome
" the artist's own conception are to the full as interesting
; those which are perhaps less original, inasmuch as they
•e inspired by actual rather than imaginative motives,
ill it is by his religious paintings that Holman Hunt is
*st known, and to these that he owes his fame.

And yet it has been said that he is not a great religious
tist ; and this may be so, for it is not altogether impos-
ble that in his striving after contemporary verisimilitude
: fact he may have lost something of the divinity, the
Dd-like power and presence, that we would fain see in
^ctures which endeavour to pourtray the scenes of the
:e of Christ. But whether he fails (as others less con-
tentious in endeavour and less high-minded in aim have
Dt failed) or whether he succeeds in realising more than
ie externals of the divine story, there is no doubt that
; an exponent of a lofty moral aim he stands second to
Dne. The parallelism and symbolism that pervade his
ictures convey to all men a lesson that no man can be
ie worse for, though sometimes it may be that the
arable dominates the composition in such a way as to
reclude a pleasure we should always be able to derive
om the work of a great painter- — the delight in a piece
F pure artistic achievement. Apart from any sermon or
.legory, one should be able to take pleasure in a picture

30 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

as a picture, and this pleasure Holman Hunt does not
always give us ; and it is a very moot question whether
his highest successes have not been those canvases in
which the inculcation of a moral is less the object of the
artist's endeavour than the presentment of a poetic fact.
Of The Two Gentlemen of Verona Ruskin said "There
has been nothing in art so earnest or complete since the
days of Albert Durer " : the picture is in every sense a
masterpiece, the perfect realisation of an unique concep-
tion, and the only blemish, if blemish there be, is the lack
of beauty in the women's faces ; and when one contem-
plates such achievements as this, the Isabella and the
Pot of Basil, and that gem, the Amaryllis, one regrets
that so few pictures of poetic charm have come from the
artist's easel, and one wonders whether a little sacrifice of
the painter's didactic aim would not have resulted in a
higher aesthetic grace and a more beautiful, one would
not say greater, artistic achievement. Hence it is a matter
of sincere congratulation to many of the artist's admirers
to know that he has turned once more to the realms of
poetry as a field of inspiration, and has repeated on canvas
the composition of that marvellous woodcut in the famous
Moxon Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott.

W. HOLMAN HUNT

ISABELLA AND THE POT OF BASIL

8 .S

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2 .3

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CHAPTER IV
THE TRANSITORY PRE-RAPHAELITE :

JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS

THE Pre-Raphaelite days of John Everett Millaisdate
from 1849 to 1859, and in the course of these ten years
produced a large number of important works, many of
hich will rank as masterpieces of the English school,
ifted with the greatest artistic power, his career may be
ustly said to have been one continuous record of success,
nmarred by adverse circumstances such as Holman Hunt
ad to contend with, and unembittered by the neglect
tiat was the portion of Madox Brown. The record alike
f his student days and of his years of accomplishment,
hows him as an artist supremely gifted by Nature, and
ompletely equipped by training, a painter whose genius
as recognised by all from the days of his youth, while
or many a long year he was the favourite of both critics
ind the public. Born in 1829, he evinced in the days of
is childhood such a precocious talent that when in 1838
is parents came to London, they sought the advice of
>ir Martin Archer Shee, at that time the President of
le Royal Academy. Sir Martin spoke very highly
f the sketches submitted to him, and, fortified by
is encouragement, young Millais entered Sass's school,
nd thence passed to the Royal Academy schools,
here his success was both instantaneous and remark-
ble. A medallist at the age of thirteen, at fifteen
e began to paint, and from that time forth he sold

32 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

his work readily ; in fact, he was enabled a few years
later to place ,£500 which he had saved at the
disposal of his friend Holman Hunt, who was then
almost tempted by his ill-success to abandon the
career he had planned, and seek fortune as a farmer
in the Colonies.

It was perhaps fortunate for Millais that when he was
nineteen he fell under the influence of Rossetti and Hunt.
Doubtless, he was a ready convert to the doctrines that
the former enunciated so fervently, ' and that the latter
strove so hard to express concretely ; but it is not
improbable that, had he not been intimate with these
youthful iconoclasts, he would have slipped into the con-
ventional prettiness of early Victorian art. In this case
certainly the world would have been the poorer for the
non-existence of such work as the Ophelia and the
Autumn Leaves ; while it may even be that without
the stimulus caused by the mutual association of the trio,
Millais might in after-years have been swamped by the
beauty of his own handicraft, and have developed into a
mere accomplished survivor of the prevalent soulless
school of the period.

When the chance intimacy of the young artists de-
veloped into the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood in 1849, it was Millais who was looked upon by his
confreres as the champion of the movement ; and a strong
and fit champion he was, quick to feel the truths that they
desired to promulgate, eager to enter the fray, far better
equipped and more accomplished technically than either
Hunt or Rossetti, and equally alive with them to the
charm of poetry in art : and it may well be that from him
came the suggestion that each should exemplify their
creed by illustrating a subject from Keats, a poet then
almost unknown to the general reader, but very dear to
all the members of the Brotherhood. Millais chose as his

JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS 33

subject Lorenzo at the House of Isabella, and despite the
iact that much work in the old style remained to be
inished, he set to work and painted the picture which
s now one of the ornaments of the Walker Art Gallery at
Liverpool, a picture which has been called "the most
wonderful painting that any youth under twenty years of
ige ever did in the world." It is true that the work as a
yhole may be said to be incoherent in design, but this
vas due to the enthusiastic acceptance by the painter of
he Pre-Raphaelite demand that an artist should say to
limself, not "how will this scene compose best?" but

how did this really happen ? " and should attempt to
ealise it with all due dramatic intensity. Certainly the

icture does not lack this last quality, nor is it wanting
n beautiful colour or great delicacy and sweetness ; but
hough Millais did not display Madox Brown's tendency
o over-emphasis, or Holman Hunt's inclination to harsh-
less, there is in this, and in the Ferdinand and Ariel, a
light exaggeration of expression and pose, a nuance of
nelegance which was to disappear in such work as The
Huguenot and the Sir Isumbras, pictures in which the Pre-
Raphaelite ideal perhaps reached its highest expression,
nasmuch as they were frankly modern and contemporary
n execution, absolute realisations of scenes as conceived
)y the painter, and uninfluenced by the work of any
former artist, except so far as they marked a return to the
absolute honesty and veracity of the painters whose work

(he Brotherhood specially admired.
Although at this date Millais sold his pictures, and sold
£hem well, still he was equally with his fellow-workers the
Subject of much adverse and blindly abusive criticism :
the picture Ferdinand lured by Ariel, which followed the
^Lorenzo, and Christ in the House of His Parents, better
known as The Carpenter's Shop, were heartily and un-
sparingly condemned; and the pictures shown in 1851,
C

34 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Mariana in the Moated Grange, The Return of the Do\
to the Ark, and The Woodman's Daughter, were all greete
with obloquy, although they are poetic in conception, ar
at the same time lovingly render absolute facts. Tl
same beauty of idea is visible in the Ophelia and Ti
Huguenot of the following year ; and though the form
is scarcely a picture to appeal to the multitude, and tl
other was at first included in the merciless onslaughts th
were made on all Pre-Raphaelite works, later the inhere]
beauty and charm of the second picture, not to speak
the finished and exquisite technique, made it popul
in the extreme.

In the following year, 1853, Millais was elected A.R.^
and from this time most of the critics were respectful, ar
many were appreciative. The foreboding ' that Rossel
expressed that " now the whole round table was dissolved
was not yet justified, though it ultimately proved we!
founded enough ; for the artist still produced su<
genuinely Pre-Raphaelite pictures as The Order ,
Release and The Proscribed Royalist, which, popularise
in their thousands by engraving, combined to place tl
painter in the forefront of public appreciation. Lat
came The Rescue, a picture of a fireman carrying childn
down the staircase of a burning house and restoring the
to the arms of the distracted mother : this, which w;
much praised at the time by Ruskin, was followed by tl
beautiful and poetic Blind Girl and Autumn Leavt
This latter has been so well described by Sir Walt
Armstrong that one may be permitted to transcribe h
words. He says it is " a work of sentiment and efTec
It tells no particular story, though it conveys stror
emotion. Four girls, two of gentle blood and tv
children of the people, are heaping up withered leav<
for the burning ; behind them is a twilight sky bathin
everything in its gorgeous tints, and absorbing what litt

JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS 35

there is left of day. In colour this is one of the finest of
Mr Millais's works — some might call it the finest of all —
and its undefined intensity of sentiment is a complete
reply to those who deny a poetic imagination to its
author." To this description these charming words of
Mr Andrew Lang are a fit corollary. He says, and no
one could express more clearly the feeling that pervades
the work, "the spiritual note of the picture lies in the
contrast between the carelessness of the young girls, who
are heaping the fire for the fun of it, and * the serious
whisper of the twilight,' as Poe fancied he could hear the
stealing of the darkness over the horizon."

The next year, 1857, saw The Escape of a Heretic and
Sir Isumbras at the Ford — the former a beautiful work,
:ull of all the painter's most admirable qualities ; the
latter, to the minds of some, the greatest achievement
of the artist's Pre-Raphaelite days. This work was
ilways a great favourite with the painter himself, and in
ater days he worked again on it, improving it in many
Darticulars. The picture represents a ford in the " north
xmntrie," a wide, fair stream, on the banks of which stands
i typical peel tower. An aged knight in golden armour,
-iding home in the evening light, has taken up two
bhildren who have been gathering sticks, one before him
and the other clinging behind, to cross the ford. That is
iall, but the lovely colour of the whole composition, and
nhe charming sentiment that pervades it, would make it a
],vork of note, even without the kindly, thoughtful, noble
face of the old knight, serene in the twilight of life as the
andscape in the afterglow of evening, and the varied
bxpressions of the two children — the younger, a chubby
boy, being intent only on keeping his position, while
;:he elder, a girl, safer in her place in front of their
guardian, sits gazing at the kindly cavalier, with
ivonder and awe mingling in her expressive face. With

*

36 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

The Vale of Rest, a picture painted two years later, and
too well-known to need description here, the mastei
passed from the manner of his youth and entered upon
another phase of his art ; and here consideration of his
work must cease. Any detailed allusion to the produc-
tions of this later period would be out of place here, foi
it can hardly be said that the more recent style is the
outcome or the development of the earlier ; although it i<
true that in many later works one traces the effect of the
earnest and painstaking endeavour of his younger days
still it must be admitted that at this time the paintei
ceased to be a Pre-Raphaelite artist.

It cannot be said of Millais that he had, even in the
youthful days of fire and fervour, a personal and individ'
ual message to give ; he does not aim at the presentmen
of a dramatic climax as Madox Brown so often did ; h(
does not strive to pourtray, like Rossetti, the soul tha
looks forth from the rapt eyes of some sweet inhabitant o
poet-land, " out of space and out of time " ; nor doe;
he paint with the moral and didactic aim of Holmar
Hunt. Nevertheless, in all his Pre-Raphaelite work on<
sees the qualities that he possessed in common with hii
coadjutors, a love of absolute and sincere veracity o
presentment, and a deep sympathy with the poetic as con
trasted with the commonplace side of things. How far ir
the lovely and thoughtful work of this period the beautifu
conception is the artist's own one cannot say ; certainly
in his later work, when no longer under the spell o
Rossetti's personality, one misses the spirit that is presen
in these pictures of an earlier day, and one is almos
driven to think that these poetic and imaginative work:
were planned and accomplished by the artist amids
surroundings and associates that furnished the inspiratioi
that he, the more accomplished artist, bodied forth s<
finely.

SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A.

THE ESCAPE OF A HERETIC

SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A.

THE BRIDESMAID

38 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

and in those later pictures which have charmed the multi-
tude on the walls of Burlington House.

Unhampered by the technical inability that was such a
stumbling-block to Rossetti in the realisation of his en-
trancing visions, and gifted by Nature with a power of sure
and rapid work that rendered quite unnecessary the long
and patient labour with which Holman Hunt builds up his
pictures, one would expect that the work of Millais as a
whole would have excelled the achievement of his fellow-
artists. But it cannot fairly be said that this is so. There
are individual pictures of beauty, distinction and charm, but
despite the admirable qualities already alluded to, as a
group they lack the individuality and the distinctive in-
forming spirit that makes the work of Madox Brown and
Holman Hunt so interesting and consistent ; though many
an admirer thinks that had he continued to work on the
old lines his achievement (great artist as he was) would have
been still greater, and regrets keenly that from any cause
he should have lapsed into another groove. It would
perhaps be too much to say that when he abandoned the
tenets of the Brotherhood of which he was the erstwhile
champion, he became in any sense the " Lost Leader" of
the poem ; and one cannot think that a painter who died
a baronet and the official head of English art had retro-
graded from the position he took up and the work he
accomplished as a youth ; still there are those who would
give much to see in his more mature work the poetic
insight, the grasp of the romantic aspect of life, that mark
his earlier pictures, and who mourn that one so supremely
gifted as a painter should seem in his later days to have
cared so little what the subject was that he depicted with
unrivalled ability.

SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A.

THE HIGHLAND LASSIE

SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART

MERCY — ST BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY

CHAPTER V
RE-RAPHAELITE AND IDEALIST:

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

ANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, possibly the most
original genius in the domains of art and letters that
is century has seen, was born in 1828, the son of Gabriel
ossetti and Frances Polidori, his wife. The Christian
ames conferred upon him were Gabriel Charles Dante, but
p early dropped Charles, and transposed the two others,
id as Dante Rossetti his name will go down to posterity,
i the house of his father, a man of singularly wide
lading and ardent thought, and a poet as well as a
holar, he lived in an atmosphere permeated with literary
ilture. The natural consequence was that, gifted to
i extraordinary degree with poetic and imaginative
Dwers of the highest order, he would seem to have
:quired unconsciously (or, at any rate, without any
*ertion other than a pleasurable one) the means of
terary expression, a craftsmanship in verse that is
eyond cavil ; but when the longing came upon him to
hibody pictorially the visions that, even as a lad,
resented themselves to him, the drudgery of acquiring
jie rudiments of painting was repugnant to his spirit ;
fod it cannot be denied that much of his work in this
liedium consequently exhibits technical shortcomings.
LS to his inspiration there can be no two opinions. He
ras essentially and thoroughly a poet of the very highest
ink ; his mind teemed with coloured and mystical

oru

to speak; of

trials, if CTZ

HOHV

-± i:::
::•: i. t: :: i^t

:- :«_:

?

_

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 41

days, he undoubtedly acquired by this preliminary
gery, and exercised at this time, a power of keen
,nd accurate drawing, as is plainly evinced by the pencil
)ortrait of his grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, dating
rom 1848.

The same year saw the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood (as already detailed), and the inception of
lossetti's first picture The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,
yhich was hung next year in the " Free Exhibition "
n Hyde Park, while Millais and Holman Hunt showed
heir pictures at the Royal Academy. The kevjriotes_
fJjlis_4Hcture may be said to be simplicity anr| SPrrf^
The Virgin, represented as a girl of about

eventeen, is shown on a balcony beneath an overhanging
dne, working, under the direction of her mother St Anna,
it an embroidery representing a lily, the emblem of
)urity, which she copies from a plant watered by a
ittle angel with rose-coloured wings. The father, St
oachim, is seen outside pruning a vine, on one of the
upports of which roosts a dove surrounded by a golden
lalo and symbolic of the Holy Spirit ; and there are
mmerous other details, each with a well-chosen symbolic
)r spiritual meaning, such as the books of the virtues
>n which the lily stands, the seven-thorned briar and
;even-leaved palm branch, surrounded by a scroll
nscribed, " Tot dolores, tot gaudia." The picture is
tainted in bright colours, quite in the style of the early
irtists the Brotherhood took as their models ; the
landling, though bv^jno means masterly, is delicate
ind true, and the composition is quite simple and naively
decorative,, while the effect of the work as a whole is
/cry pleasing, full as it is of spiritual thought and
appropriate symbolism.

This picture, and the one which followed from
Rossetti's brush next year, the wonderful Ecce Ancilla

42 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Domini (marvellous indeed as the work pf a boy of
twenty-one), may be taken as typical of the artist's
work in oils in the first of the three periods into which
his art may be said to fall. These, and some of the
water-colours of this period, are the only truly
Pre-Raphaelite pictures that he produced ; his later
works (as will be seen) being by no means closely
painted transcripts from Nature, but rather romantic
works of the most ideal kind, in which, however, traces
are still to be found — in the attention to details and
accessories — of the artist's erstwhile enthusiasm for
sincerity and veracity of presentment. But almost more
characteristic of this phase of Rossetti's art are the
numerous water-colours executed between the years
1850 and 1860, full of splendour of colour and freshness
of conception. The Passover in the Holy Family (a
highly Pre-Raphaelite drawing, conceived in 1849, but left
unfinished in 1855); Paolo and Francesca ; Lancelot
and Guinevere at the Tomb of Arthur ; The Blue Closet;
Dante on the Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice ; The
Chapel before the Lists ; The Ttme of Seven Towers ; Sir
Galahad; Lucrezia Borgia; Fazio's Mistress ; and many
others which might be mentioned. These do not call for
detailed description ; each is replete with rich colour and
imaginative charm, and the effect produced upon those
who were privileged to see them (Rossetti working then as
always for a small and intimate circle, by no means
desirous of any appeal to popular appreciation) may
be judged from the description by the late James
Smetham of The Wedding of St George. " One ol
the grandest things, like a golden, dim dream.
Love, 'credulous all gold/ gold armour, a sense o!
secret enclosure in ' palace chambers far apart ' ; but
quaint chambers in quaint palaces, where angels creep
in through sliding-panel doors, and stand behind rows

, she, //•//// < <//'/•/////.

•-.•/,- /,„/;;,•/

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 43

of flowers, drumming on golden bells, with wings crim-
son and green."

A more critical note from the pen of Mr Sydney Colvin
may be quoted as probably the soundest and sanest
estimate ever penned of the artist's achievement of this
period, in which the writer says : " To sum up generally
the characteristics of this period, the first are vividness
and ingenuity of dramatic presentment, the idea so
predominating over the matter that actions are allowed
to appear as strained, and compositions as naif, as they
please, provided only the emotional and intellectual
points are driven home. These are among the qualities
whereby Rossetti's work is obviously and spontaneously
allied to that of the Middle Age ; others are his enjoy-
ment of the quaint invention of costumes and furniture,
and the weight of symbolical meaning which he makes
every circumstantial detail and accessory bear. Others,
again, are his neglect of the elements of chiaroscuro and
atmosphere in painting, and his delight in and insistence
on the element of colour. Many of the little pictures of
this time flash and glow like jewels or the fragments
of some gorgeous painted window. Sometimes this
brilliancy and variegation of colour is carried to a point
where harmony is left quite behind ; in other instances,
las in Mr Boyce's beautiful version of the Meeting of
'Dante and Beatrice in Purgatory -, a water-colour of 1852,
ja scheme of extraordinary daring, as it were malachite
land emerald, sapphire and turquoise and lapis-lazuli set
side by side, is nevertheless treated as to satisfy as well
las amaze the colour-sense."

In the pictures of the second period of Rossetti's >
|art the more characteristic work is in oils, and the artist
ceased somewhat to tell a story by means of a dramatic
(group ; he rather used a single female figure and its
accessories as symbolic of an abstract idea or theme, a

dse

44 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

personification of some .. InteHeetual CQn££ptjpn ; or else
he simply painted beauty for beauty's _sake, a lovely
form bedecked with all the rich adornments his vivid
fancy revelled in ; a lovely face full of sensuous charm
and the mystery of beauty. In these pictures Rossetti's
genius shows itself ripe, but not over-ripe ; the
characteristics of a certain type of feminine beauty are
obviously dominant in his work, though not, as in
later days, over-emphasised ; and his drawing, while
occasionally poor, is not so faulty as it afterwards was,
while his colour throughout is masterly, and the painting
of the details he delighted to introduce into his pictures —
the flowers, rich stuffs and jewels — is superb. Later, his
colour was apt to be hot and jarring ; his genius, always
poetical, seemed to turn to the morbid in its mani-
festations ; and, though in the last year or two of his life
better work came from his easel, it is not by the pictures
of this third phase that he will be judged, and they do not
call, accordingly, for detailed notice. When the subject
of Rossetti's technique is under review, it should be
noticed that it was characteristic of his method of work
to prepare for these larger pictures in oils very careful
chalk drawings (which indeed might rather be called
crayon pictures), many of which are to the full as
beautiful as the finished work, possibly because he
understood the possibilities and the limitations of the
method completely ; and it should also be definitely
stated that, though he was admittedly never completely
accomplished as a painter in oils, in this department he
yet acquired real power within the limits that he set
himself. Depth of tone and chiaroscuro he did not aim
at, but his flesh-painting in this middle period of his
work is excellent, displaying a certain bloom and beauty
together with much delicate modelling ; problems of
colour were by him solved in the most masterly

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

JOLI CCEUR

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

LA BELLA MANO

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 45

manner ; and, as has been said, his delightful rendering
of accessories, of enamels and blossoms, as in The Bride ;
of mirrors and brazen vessels, and sumptuous furniture,
as in La Bella Mano, must always be a keen source of
pleasure to the beholder.

Perhaps the best known of the pictures of this period is
Beat a Beatrix ', the chalk version of which dates from
1859, while the oil picture now in the national collection
would seem to have been completed in 1863. This
reminiscence of the painter's lost wife, " pourtrayed with
perfect fidelity out of the inner chambers of his soul,"
depicts Beatrice seated on the balcony of her father's
palace in Florence, entranced in heavenly visions ; and
the depth and sense of mystery, the "intense and
beautiful peace," pervading the work, place it on a
plane apart. This was followed by such work as Fait
Rosamund (1861); Belcolore (1863), a gem of the first
water; Lady Lilith (1864); and then came the annus
mirabilis of Rossetti's artistic life, which saw the com-
pletion of the oil-colour versions of such superb
masterpieces as Monna Vanna, II Ramoscello, Venus
Verticordia, and The Beloved. Later were painted Joli
Cceur (1867); Monna Rosa (1867); the crayon version
of the Donna della Finestra (1869); Mariana (1870);
Proserpina (1874); Veronica Veronese (1872); and La
Bella Mano (1875); the last two marking perhaps in
the exotic fulness of their beauty, the lavish wealth of
their conception and the force of their colour and
handling, the end of this, the noblest phase of
Rossetti's art. These were succeeded by other pictures
| in which the artist's individualities degenerated into
; mannerisms ; his ideals more or less ran away with
. him, and his colour and handling were no longer equal
i to that of his best work.

Most typical of the highest achievements of Rossetti's

46 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

genius is The Bride, and of this picture so entirely
adequate a description and appreciation has been
penned by Mr F. G. Stephens, the lifelong friend of
the artist, that no excuses are needed for quoting that
critic's words at length. " The Bride, or The Beloved"
he says, " dates its origin from 1863, and as regards its
splendour and colour and the passion of its design
need not fear comparison with the greatest works of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Venice. In
these respects this chef -d? oeuvre is a superb and ardent
illustration of the Song of Solomon, * My beloved is
mine, and I am his ; let him kiss me with the kisses of
his mouth, for thy love is better than wine ! '

"The picture comprises — as if they had halted in
a marriage procession, towards the spot where the
enraptured bridegroom awaits them — five life-size adult
maidens and a negro girl, who, in the front of the group,
and bearing a mass of roses in a golden vase, is adorned
with barbaric jewellery, all of which harmonises with
her dusky skin, which, although it has the true
Titianesque ruddy undertint, is of a deep bronze-brown
surface hue. The negress and her burthen are intended
to contrast intensely with the costume and face of the
bride herself, who is clad in an apple-green robe, as
lustrous as silk and as splendid as gold and embroideries
of flowers and leaves in natural colours can make it.
This garment and its decorations support the colour
of the dark maid's skin, and heighten the value of the
pure red and white of the bride's carnations, while the
contours of the African's face and form contrast with
the Caucasian charm of the bride, her stately countenance,
and ' amorous-lidded eyes.'

"The Song is aptly illustrated by the attire of the
bride and her companions ; it says : ' She shall be
brought unto the king in raiment of needlework : the

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

VENUS VERTiCORDIA

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

LA DONNA DELLA FINESTRA

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 47

virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company,
and shall be brought unto thee.' On either side of the
bride appear two damsels, not yet brides. The principal
figures are differently clad, diverse in face and form,1 and
to some extent contrasted in character and expression.
Besides her robe the bride wears about her head and
throat a veil of tissue differing in its green from that
of the robe, and above her forehead rises an aigrette of
scarlet enamel and gold that resembles in some respects
the peculiar head-dress of ancient Egyptian royalty;
this is set like a coronet upon her hair, while advancing
towards the bridegroom, with an action at once graceful
and natural, she, half thoughtfully, half in pride of
supreme loveliness, has moved the tissue from her face
and throat. With the same movement she has thrown
backwards a large ringlet of her hair, revealing the
softened dignity of her love-laden eyes, as well as her
face, which is exquisitely fair and fine, and has the least
hint of blushes within the skin, as though the heart of
the lady quickened, while we see there is tenderness in

, her look, but voluptuous ardour nowhere.

" All the four maids seem to have been chanting a
nuptial strain, while they have moved rhythmically with

j the steps of the bride.

" Excepting one or two later works of the master,
where sentiment of a more exalted sort, as in Proserpina^
inspired the designs, The Beloved appears to me to be
the finest production of his genius. Of his skill, in the
high artistic sense, implying the vanquishment of
prodigious difficulties — difficulties the greater because
of his imperfect technical education — there cannot be
two opinions as to the pre-eminence of Mr Rae's
magnificent possession. It indicates the consummation
of Rossetti's powers in the highest order of modern
art, and is in perfect harmony with that poetic inspiration

48 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

which is found in every one of his more ambitious
pictures. This example can only be called Venetian,
because of the splendid colouring which obtains in it.
Tintoret produced works which assort most fortunately
with this one, and his finely dramatic mode of designing
reappears, so to say, in The Beloved, where the intensity
of Venetian art is exalted, if that term be allowed, in a
modern strain, while its form, coloration, and chiaroscuro
are most subtly devised to produce a whole which is
thoroughly harmonised, and entirely self-sustained. Of
how few modern instances could this be said ? The
colouring of this picture supports the sentiment of the
design in the happiest manner, and in its magnificence
the work agrees with the chastity of the conception.
There is a nuptial inspiration throughout it, even in the
deep red of the blush roses the negress bears. The
technique is so fine that it leaves nothing to be desired,
even in the lustrousness of the gold vase, in the varied
brilliancy of the robe of the bride, in the subtle delicacy
of the carnations, solidly and elaborately modelled as
they are, and varied to suit the nature of each of the
figures. ^.ossetti's Beloved is in English art what
Spenser's gorgeous and passionate EpiThaTamium is in
English verse, and if not more rapturous, it is more
compact of sumptuous elements."

Any adequate attempt to review the characteristics
of Rossetti's own wonderful achievement, and his
influence on art at large, would necessarily be lengthy;
no brief note would suffice to convey a true appreciation
of the originality and the power of this wayward and
self-centred genius. The influence he exercised on
contemporaries and successors was by no means in-
considerable, in spite of his life having been spent
outside the world of art and letters. The position that
"he occupied in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood has

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

THE BELOVED

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 49

| already been alluded to, and what share was actually
| his in their vivifying crusade may never be really known.
! But it is admitted that it was he who had the penchant
for propaganda and proselytising, that his was the fiery-
soul that was the source of so much poetic inspiration ;
without him the Brotherhood as such would probably
not have come into being, and the existence of the
Brotherhood converted the sporadic (and possibly futile)
efforts, which the others would doubtless have singly
made on their own initiative, into a systematic attempt
to introduce a healthier tendency into our national art,
an attempt which has had the most far-reaching results.
The intense activity of to-day, in all branches of art, as
compared with the lethargy and torpidity of fifty years
ago, can be traced very largely to the stand made by
these young men and their associates. But, besides
the effect that Rossetti had on art through Pre-
Raphaelism, and besides the school of direct followers
that have arisen inspired by his work (a group to be
treated of later), there is the influence of his own strange
deals and his unique achievements to be traced in the
work of many and diverse artists. It would be very
ascinating, and at the same time rather startling, to
:ollow the ramifications of this inspiration among those
painters who are far from being of the school of Rossetti.
Artists whose aims are as far apart as Mr Whistler and
Sir J. D. Linton, Matthew Maris and George du Maurier,
Vtr Wilson Steer and Mr William Wontner (these by
way of example), have betrayed occasionally touches of
nspiration or passages of work that, noted by the
vntelligent critic, cause the question to rise unbidden
n the mind — would these have occurred to the more
•ecent artist had Rossetti never painted ? And though
space will not permit any expansion of this theme, it
nust be noted that not only English but Continental
D

50 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

artists are beginning to own the sway and the fascination
of the work of Rossetti and his disciple, Burne Jones.

Turning to his actual work it may be said that,
materially, its keynote is splendour, splendour of colour,
of conception, of mise en scene, coupled with grandeur
and impressiveness of design. His essentially romantic
spirit delighted in the exotic and the unique, and there
is a sense of opulence in all his work that is almost
overpowering. Technically, of course (as has been
already said), there are shortcomings in some of his
pictures ; his drawing is not immaculate, and his powers
of realisation were not equal to his gift of imagination.
He was essentially a poet working in pigments, and it
is evident, from his use of the explanatory sonnet
appended to so many of his pictures, that he himself
was conscious of the inadequacy of pictorial art to convey
all that he sought to express. But with all shortcomings
what a glorious achievement his is !

Spiritually, he was a devotee of beauty, and supreme
beauty he rightly found and fashioned in the ideal faces
that he painted so well. But the distinction of Rossetti's
work lies in the fact that he conceived and embodied
not beauty alone, but that element of strangeness in
beauty which Mr Walter Pater rightly discerned as the
inmost spirit of romantic art. It has been said that he
always depicted one face, and one only, but this has
more than once been shown to be erroneous. At the
same time, he has admittedly invested many of the
faces he painted (especially in his later days) with the
characteristics of a type of beauty that was a creation
of his own ; in other words, he originated a new ideal
loveliness, a type that appeals at once to the beholder's
sensuous joy in beauty and his intellectual apprehension
of a soul behind the mask. Lovely faces he depicted,
overshadowed by a cloud of dusky hair, " sweet carved

ELIZABETH ELEANOR ROSSETTI

LADY CLARE

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 51

lips for a conqueror's kiss," all the body's beauty that his
artist's mind conceived he strove to depict, and by and
through this beauty all the loveliness of soul that his
poet's heart could dream of. The sweetness of love, the
glamour of mysteries unknown, the brooding aspect of
passion, the clear and placid joy of living, are all to be
found in the limpid depths of his women's eyes — such
wonderful eyes as no other artist has ever painted, from
the clear grey unshadowed ones, that seem to swim in
the head of The Bride, to the dusky orbs that burn in
the face of Astarte, " in Venus' eyes the gaze of
Proserpine."

There are critics, of course, to whom the type of
beauty he chose is repellent, and there are pictures of
his in which the " lovely large arms and the neck like
a tower," are exaggerated to an unacceptable degree,
as well as the facial characteristics that have been alluded
to ; but, while one recognises the truth of some adverse
criticism, one is still justified in acclaiming the author
of so long a series of works, marked by such marvellous
glory of colour, intensely vivid feeling, and opulence
of beauty, as essentially and truly an artist of supreme
genius.

CHAPTER VI

THE OTHER PRE-RAPHAELITE
BRETHREN:

JAMES COLLINSON

WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI

FREDERICK GEORGE STEPHENS

THOMAS WOOLNER

WALTER HOWELL DEVERELL

THE remaining members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood, as originally constituted, were Thomas Woolner,
F. G. Stephens (at that time an art student), James
Collinson, and W. M. Rossetti. The latter, not being
a painter, acted as a sort of secretary of the coterie, and
was for some years almost the only writer who ventured
to uphold the principles of the fraternity. This he did
in the Critic and the Spectator ; and it was, doubtless,
largely due to his championship, as well as to the
advocacy of John Ruskin, that the Pre-Raphaelite
influence extended far beyond the immediate circle of
the original group. F. G. Stephens, well equipped by
reading and temperament, also turned his attention to
the literature of art, abandoning its practice ; and though
his life's work, as he truly says, has been mostly with
the pen, it would have been interesting to include among
the illustrations of this book an example of his pictorial
art, and it is a matter for regret that this was found
impossible. The work of Woolner, the sculptor, being
in another medium, is not treated of here ; and it must

THE OTHER PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN 53

be admitted that the achievement of Collinson is not
particularly noteworthy. This artist's most remarkable
work is The Renunciation of St Elizabeth of Hungary,
and this, which is a praiseworthy picture, was more or
less of a spasmodic effort, his usual style being chiefly
domestic art ; and he did not make the mark which
in the early days of the movement his colleagues had
loped for, although another picture of his, The Charity
Debut, which was painted in 1848, before his
mnection with the Brotherhood, attracted some attention,
[odest and retiring in his disposition, his work was un-
ibitious, and on becoming a Roman Catholic he
fancied that it was incumbent on him to resign his
lembership of the society. The connection thus
;rminated was not re-established ; and though he lived
id painted till the spring of 1881, he passes out of
>ur story.

When Walter Howell Deverell died, in 1854, at the
early age of twenty-six, he was not only a loss to the
circle of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but also to the
world of art at large, for had he lived a few years longer
he would without doubt have distinguished himself. He
was an intimate of Dante Rossetti, who nominated him
for the place in the fraternity left vacant by the secession
of Collinson, and Deverell more than repaid this act of
friendship by being the means of introducing Rossetti
to Miss Siddal, who was afterwards his wife. This lady
was sitting at the time to Deverell as the model for the
head of the disguised Viola in the picture reproduced
in this volume — how often and how lovingly Rossetti
depicted her strangely-beautiful face as Beatrice, or in
some other character, there is no need to say here. This
large picture is a scene from Twelfth Night, Act II., Sc. 4.
The Duke, the central figure of the composition, is a
strong piece of painting : he is depicted as a love-sick

54 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

man, wishing to be entertained by the songs and music
of his surrounding friends and attendants, and yet, withal,
he cannot hide the trouble which is uppermost in his
mind — his unrequited love for Olivia. On his right is
seated Viola, disguised as a boy ; and to the left the
clown is singing with earnestness, and, at the same time,
with such an air of self-satisfaction as denotes the high
value he sets on his own abilities. This is a picture
which gives evidence of thought and power; but the
painter was not to live long enough to show the fruit of
his promise. Artistic, clever, genial, remarkably good-
looking, fortune in other respects was unkind to him.
In 1853 the death of his father, who was secretary to
the Schools of Design (now enlarged into the Science
and Art Department), threw additional responsibility on
to his shoulders, and the ill-health which was to cause
his death the year after attacked him. Still, in spite
of all, he was full of courage, and continued to paint,
his last picture being The Doctors Last Visit — a physician
trying to explain to the assembled family of a sick man
that there is no hope. Other works by him were A Lady
with a Bird-cage^ formerly in the Leathart collection,
and & Scene from "As You Like It" on which Rossetti
worked after the artist's death : and in these, as in all,
he painted closely from Nature, and displayed an
exquisite sense of simplicity and grace.

It will thus be seen that the pictorial work accomplished
by the actual members of the Brotherhood, other than
the three leaders, was a negligeable quantity. In itself,
it was not of great importance as a practical exposition
of their creed, but it was desirable, in the interests of
completeness and accuracy, that a brief account of it
should be included here, before turning to the painters
who did work based on Pre-Raphaelite principles, though
they were not actually members of the brief-lived

THE OTHER PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN 55

Brotherhood. How brief was the actual life of the
Brotherhood^ as originally conceived and inaugurated,
may be judged from Mr W. M. Rossetti's statement that
the fraternity, founded in the autumn of 1848, may be
regarded as sinking into desuetude from the early part of
1851, if considered as a practical working organisation;
how enduring and far-reaching the results of their crusade
(which by no means ceased when their periodic meetings
became obsolete), will be seen from the following pages.

CHAPTER VII
THE ROMANTIC INFLUENCE

FREDERICK SANDYS
SIMEON SOLOMON
GEORGE WILSON

HAVING considered the aims and the work of the men
who were officially, if the term may be permitted, of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the following pages must
be devoted to an account, however brief, of the achievement
of the painters who have been directly or indirectly
influenced by the principles or the practice of the
members of the Brotherhood. It has already been
pointed out that the term Pre-Raphaelite has been very
loosely used by those who talk the jargon of art without a
knowledge of the true meaning of the words they
employ ; and that the expression has been applied
indiscriminately to two classes of work. As has been
noted, it has been employed to describe the pictures
painted with unsparing effort after truth in every way —
honest endeavours after sincerity which are really and
truly Pre-Raphaelite, as the inventors of the word under-
stood it ; and it has been used (and this is where
confusion has arisen) to characterise every picture which
showed in conception or in feeling that the painter had
been influenced by the later work of Dante Rossetti, or
of his pupil, Edward Burne-Jones ; and the word has so
far passed into the language with this double meaning
that it would be vain to attempt to prevent its use in the

FREDERICK SANDYS

MEDEA

THE ROMANTIC INFLUENCE 57

twofold way. The only thing to be done is to accept it
frankly, and to include in a book like this not only the
work of Windus and Burton, entirely and absolutely
Pre-Raphaelite, but also the productions of Simeon
Solomon, for example, which never were Pre-Raphaelite
in the true sense of the word (work less realistic never
came from the easel of a painter), but which is Pre-
Raphaelite in the sense of showing, in a very marked
legree, an inspiration akin to that of Rossetti.
The three distinguished artists who are here grouped
>gether have been considered in one chapter because
le observer may mark in their work the present-
lent of the romantic spirit as affecting different
linds. Each has painted ideal and imaginative pictures
-that is the common ground on which they may be
;ated of; the differences are great and noteworthy. To
Lossetti the world of romance, the land of dreams and
visions, was spiritual or sensuous or tragic by turns or
[together : his magnificent and many-sided imagination
>uld give us the pure loveliness of a Beata Beatrix, or
the splendid " body's beauty," of La Bella Mano, or the
haunting pity of the Donna della Finestra^ or the tragedy
of Found. His was the master-mind ; but as regards the
work of the three painters whose names head this
chapter we may see one dominant idea in each case,
Frederick Sandys strikes a note that Rossetti never did
— the Wagnerian note of the tragedy of heroes, almost
superhuman, elemental ; Simeon Solomon shows us,
maybe in allegory, the brooding aspect of passion — a
slumbrous yet ecstatic fervour that is not of the Western
world, less of the mind than Sandys, less of the spirit
than George Wilson ; while the work of this last artist
displays a charm that is purely spiritual, a charm as
dissociated from any earthly basis and any attraction
of bodily beauty as is the source of so much of his

icii an one
be one of
o his life-

58 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

inspiration — the poetry of Shelley. Of course, each of
these artists, being an artist, expresses his ideal in terms
of physical beauty, if the expression may be used, but
with neither is mere physical loveliness the end and
aim of his endeavours.

There is at present a tendency among many of the
gentlemen who pass as art critics to announce every now
and again, with a blare of trumpets and a banging of
cymbals, the discovery of a hitherto unknown artist.
He may be either a very young man who endeavours
to compel by novelty or audacity the reputation that
years of solid achievement may not bring (such an one
confounding fame and notoriety), or he may
the seniors in the arts who has elected to do
work quietly and unostentatiously, without any glare of
self-advertisement or any chorus of puff from a clique ;
in either case, it is his misfortune to be " discovered"
occasionally, and no artist has suffered more from such
" discovery " than Frederick Sandys. To those art lovers
who are not allured by meretricious trickery or awed by
pictorial fecundity, the occasional work of this great
painter has always given pleasure. His pictures have
been eagerly anticipated, greeted with admiration, and
lovingly remembered ; but, at the same time, it is perfectly
true that he has never been a popular artist, and that
" the man in the street " knows him not.

It has been stated more than once that Sandys was a
pupil of George Richmond and Samuel Lawrence (upon
whose style of chalk drawing he is supposed to have
based his own), while it is also said that he attended the
Royal Academy Schools ; but these assertions are incorrect,
and, unlike some of the other Pre-Raphaelite artists, he
owes nothing to the Academy for his artistic training and
development. Born in 1832, at Norwich, his earliest
teaching was derived from his father, himself a painter;

FREDERICK SANDYS

VIVIEN

FREDERICK SANDYS 59

and the studies executed in his days of pupilage which
still exist show that, while working along independent
lines, he tended to the same goal as Madox Brown and
Holman Hunt. This tendency to searching care in
draughtsmanship and absolute sincerity of presentment
was, no doubt, confirmed by his acquaintance with
Rossetti, the master-spirit of the group. It was in 1857
that Sandys first called on Rossetti, taking the opportunity
to obtain a mental likeness of him, afterwards used in
that curious caricature The Nightmare. The story of
this is so well known that it need not be told again ;
suffice it to say that the acquaintance developed into
friendship, and in 1860 the two artists were residing
under the same roof. At first Sandys devoted himself
mainly to drawing for woodcuts for Once a Week and
other periodical publications, drawings in many cases
so excellently translated by the engraver that the woodcuts
are treasures to be hoarded ; but very shortly the artist
commenced that lovely series of ideal pictures by which
his fame is assured. One at least of these paintings,
The Valkyrie, is a translation from the black-and-white
of a woodcut (flarald Harfagr) into colour, and the
beauty of this canvas and the richness of the colour in
the flowers and the robe of the stately figure standing in
the sunset glow and questioning the sacred raven make
one wish that such drawings as Rosamund, Queen of the
Lombards, and the splendid conception that illustrates
Christina Rossetti's poem Amor Mundi had also been
repeated as pictures. Others, such as Danae in the
Brazen Chamber, Manoli, and especially The Old Chartist,
would have made canvases that would have been delightful
to look upon, strong and restrained, full of charm and
decorative beauty. The qualities of grandeur of con-
ception and strength of execution which are apparent
in these woodcuts are evident throughout the artist's

60 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

work in the nobler medium — pictures, such as Vivien,
Morgan le Fay, and Medea, and others which might be
named, of subjects taken from the fields of old romance.

It may be that it is to Rossetti's influence, or, at any
rate, to his example, that we owe these and similar
pictures of chivalric and classic ideal. Rossetti's influence
may perhaps also be traced in some cases in the type of
female beauty chosen by the artist, and in the sumptuous
colour of the completed work ; but this inspiration did
not go further, for it is to Sandys himself, technically a
much more accomplished artist than his friend, that we
owe the note of lofty tragedy that is the dominant theme
in his art. This individual note is very remarkable.
The artist choses as a subject Cassandra cowing with her
scathing words of scorn the shrinking Helen, or the
terrible agony of Medea, rather than the neo-Hellenic
futilities that now pass muster as classic art ; and when
he turns to subjects from the Arthurian cycle or the
Scandinavian Sagas, we find him, if possible, still more at
home. His spirit is essentially attuned to that of Gothic
romance, while Rossetti's art gives evidence everywhere of
his Italian blood. The sensuous medievalism, or the
spiritual purity of Rossetti's triumphs, are alien to our
northern climes ; we know their beauty, we feel their
charm, but they are exotic : the sombre and tragic
intensity of Sandys' work, and the stern, passionate
beauty of his conceptions show an inspiration of sterner
mould, and can only be compared to the grandeur and
the brooding horror of the Sagas of the North. The
calm, scornful loveliness of Vivien (reproduced in these
pages), the splendour of the beauty depicted, and the
masterly colour and technique of the painting, combine
to make it a very noteworthy picture ; but it was
succeeded by two other canvases, Morgan le Fay and
Medea, in which the tragic note is more evident. Morgan

FREDERICK SANDYS

FREDERICK SANDYS 61

le Fay was the sister of King Arthur, who, envying the
love he inspired, and hating the guileless honesty of his
soul, planned, with the aid of sorcery, many attempts on
his life and happiness. The picture shows her, worn with
the strength of her own evil passions, standing near the
loom on which she has woven a mantle designed for
Arthur — a Nessus' shirt which will destroy the wearer —
and gazing at it by the light of a lamp, her face lit with
the anticipation of her hateful triumph. Beauty distorted
with passion, a soul whelmed in malice — such is the
picture. Medea has been thus described : " A half-length
of the wife of Jason, her cheeks pale and thin, and her
eyes wild with anguish ; the white drapery and the white
countenance alike lit up with weird illumination by the
flames that issue from a brazier set on a marble slab in
front, upon which lie instruments of enchantment —
mysterious runes, pagan images, bright-eyed toads, and
a shell filled with clotted human blood. With one hand
she pours poison into the brazier from a strangely-shaped
vessel of glass, the ringers of the other clutch wildly at
the necklace of red coral and blue beads that is coiled
round her neck ; and behind, on the dark background,
are wrought symbolic figures of the Golden Fleece and
the ship Argo, and all the tragic things of Medea's life."
Sandys has in later years abandoned to some extent his
work in oils, and has practised in crayons, producing in
this medium many rich and beautiful designs ; but in
all his work, in monochrome or in colours, this element
of passion and of tragedy is conspicuous : he choses
deliberately sternness rather than tenderness, power rather
than softness. The scornful petulance of Proud Maisie
as she listens to the prophecy of the bird ; the poignant
longing of Penelope ; the intense horror of Cassandra,
voicing the awful devastation of the future of Troy, and
anguished beyond expression at the heedless aspect of

62 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

those who hear — such conceptions he depicts with vigour
and strength ; while, from beginning to end of his
achievement (and the end is not yet, we hope), he shows
himself, as Rossetti said, " the greatest of living draughts-
men " ; and his versatile technical accomplishments,
united with such imaginative fire and spontaneity,
proclaiming him one of the greatest of the Pre-Raphaelite
painters, not embarrassed, as was Rossetti, by imperfect
training in his craft, and more gifted with original insight
and with inspiration than was Millais.

It must not be forgotten that Frederick Sandys is also
a portrait painter — a painter of absolute and searching
likenesses, such as place the sitter before the spectator
with entire actuality. His oil paintings of Mrs Anderson
Rose and Mrs Lewis are marvellous in their life-like
fidelity, and may be said to be unapproached in this
country since the days of Holbein ; while such chalk
drawings as the portraits of Mrs Jean Palmer, Lord
Battersea, Matthew Arnold, John Richard Green, Dean
Church, and Lord Tennyson (the three latter being items
in a series of likenesses of literary men commissioned by
Messrs Macmillan) reveal in their vigour and dignity the
hand of the master. Colour, detail, character — all are
here ; and in these, as in the imaginative works spoken
of before, we see the apotheosis of Gothic art — Gothic,
that is, as contrasted both with the true and unconven-
tional landscape school, which is a comparatively modern
product, and with the neo-classicisms, obvious or masked,
that do duty as the greater part of art in England to-day.
Whether he re-embodies for us some old legend, or
whether he shows, as in his portraits, the presentments of
men as they are, he is an unflinching realist ; a master of
beauty, he deals not in abstractions, but in actualities ;
and if Ford Madox Brown was the modern representative
of Holbein, assuredly Frederick Sandys is the successor

SIMEON SOLOMON 63

of Diirer — the successor and not the copyist : for it is
similarity due to sympathy, and not to imitation ; to the
same grim, yet delicate fancy ; the same catholic apprecia-
tion and assimilation of the good that has gone before ;
the same originality, directness, and intensity, both of
thought and expression. This applies both to the superb
poetical work and to the portraits that he has painted.
In the former we find dramatic conception allied to
masterful technique, the romantic ideal expressed in
terms of the severest draughtsmanship ; in the latter we
see the very men and women who sat to him, not, as is
the fashion to-day, a beautiful mask of the sitter, nor,
as Mr Watts sometimes gives us, a translation of the
subject's mind rather than an actual likeness, but a true,
strong, and expressive portrait, excellent in modelling
and in drawing — the actual presentment of a human
being.

Simeon Solomon, who was born in 1841, came of an
artistic stock, his brother Abraham being a painter of
sufficient distinction to obtain the Associateship of the
Royal Academy ; while his sister Rebeka also painted
figure subjects, and attracted notice by several exhibited
works, one of the best representing Peg Woffmgton's
visit to Triplet and his starving family, as related by
Charles Reade. Abraham Solomon's pictures show little
or none of the spirit that animates his younger brother's
work, the best known being Waiting for the Verdict — a
very popular subject, representing with truth and pathos
the family of a prisoner on trial. Simeon Solomon, like
Frederick Sandys, was not a student at the Academy
schools ; and though he received some instruction, as was
natural, from his brother, and some at Legh's Art School,
in Newman Street, his genius was mainly self-taught.
Like Rossetti, he was somewhat impatient of the disci-
pline of the schools, for his fancies demanded embodiment,

64 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

and, naturally enough, he preferred creative work to the
routine imposed upon students. It was early in life that
he attracted the attention of art lovers, his picture of
Moses, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861, exciting
the favourable notice of Thackeray, who praised it in one
of his " Roundabout Papers " ; and it was shortly after,
in the year 1864, that he painted his most important
work, Habet, which the writer has vainly endeavoured to
trace. In this picture, inspired by Whyte Melville's
novel, "The Gladiators," he concerned himself little,
perhaps, with archaeological niceties, but he gave ex-
pression to the varying play of emotion and character in
the faces of a number of Roman ladies who are gazing
from the gallery into the arena, where a gladiator, having
succumbed to his opponent, is to lose his life — the victim
of their merciless whim. But this is scarcely an example
of the artist's typical work, which dealt more with
abstractions, with symbols, and not with actualities. His
wayward genius may be said to be akin to that of the
master mystic Blake, but it was of a softer, gentler kind,
and with less riotous exuberance of vision. The charming
little Love in Autumn is an exquisite example of his
allegory. The shuddering figure and woful face of the
god tell their own pathetic tale, as, buffeted by the chilly
winds that mark the coming of winter and death, his
radiant plumes bedraggled and useless, he wanders along
the rocky path strewn with the fallen leaves that portend
decay. The colour, rich but subdued, accords well with
the sentiment of the picture, which, so far as it goes, is
eminently satisfying : we must not ask virile presentments
of intense emotion from the genius of a painter who is
a dreamer of dreams, whose art is essentially mystic and
exotic. Amor Sacramentum and Dawn are similar
allegorical compositions ; and the sensuous fervour of
expression that marks such pictures as the beautiful

SIMEON SOLOMON

AMOR SACRAMENTUM

SIMEON SOLOMON

LOVE IN AUTUMN

SIMEON SOLOMON— GEORGE WILSON 65

Priest of an Eastern Church and Greek High Priest is
thoroughly typical of the artist's poetic work.

Allusion should be made here to his chalk drawings,
some slight, but many carried so far as to rank with the
finished pictures in the more lasting mediums, as was
done by Rossetti, whose work evidently appealed strongly
to Simeon Solomon's mind ; and the beautiful series of
pencil drawings, from the book of Ruth and the Song of
Songs, must not pass unnoticed. The artist was evidently
strongly attracted by the intensity of feeling displayed in
the latter poem ; his mind was attuned both to its music
and its mystic significance, and the drawings by which he
has illustrated it are full of the most exquisite beauty and
the most subtle charm. Original in the extreme, they are
thoroughly in accord with the great " Song," and Solomon
shows in these, as in the pictures before spoken of, that, if
not a great painter, he is certainly an artist of very distinct
poetic charm, and of much individuality.

It may be that exception could be taken to the inclusion
of George Wilson in an account of the Pre-Raphaelite
painters, and it is true that he was neither a member nor
an associate of the group ; but it must be admitted that
the same spirit was there — he was as little content as they
to adopt the routine and the conventions of picture making.
Love of Nature and reverence for her was evident in every-
thing that he did ; and the same reaction against a mere
display of skilful technique, the same impatience of the
attempt to formulate rules by which the production of
masterpieces could be ensured, and the same honest
endeavour to be individual, to paint good pictures, and
paint them in the best possible way, mark him as being in
sympathy with the aims of the earlier English Pre-
Raphaelites. He sought his own path, he aimed at his
own goal ; and, undeterred by his chronic ill-health, and
unmoved by the damnation of faint -praise bestowed upon
E

GEORGE WILSON 67

i of long grass and weeds and flowers." Such landscapes
are fit settings for the beautiful visions of old. Dryads
land Oreads would seem to haunt such mellow valleys;
and the highest manifestations of Wilson's genius are
those works in which he employs a delightful poetic
landscape as a background for some ideal figure. Two
very typical and lovely examples are the magnificent
vision of Asia, from Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound,"
and the equally fine Alastor, inspired by the same poet's
work. The last picture has been thus described : " The
Alastor^ exhibited many years ago at the Academy,
represents the Poet of Shelley's poem as he comes to
the lonely spot in the woods where he is to die at
moonrise. He puts aside the branches of the thicket,
through which he has to force his way, with his right
hand, peering through them with wistful, melancholy
eyes, while with his left he presses his scanty drapery to
his breast, as though his heart itself were a wound. The
last faint afterglow of sunset is seen through the trees
above his head, and a single white moth, disturbed by his
coming, flutters away by his left shoulder. A few
withered leaves, whose brown tints are of great value in
the scheme of colour, mark the time as late autumn.
The likeness of the poet's face to the well-known portrait
of Shelley will be evident to everyone. In this exquisite
picture Wilson has embodied the very spirit of Shelley's
poem — the spirit of solitude. It is genius making its
way alone through the wilderness of the world. This is
one of the most perfectly finished of his pictures. The
figure is a masterpiece of expression ; and the lovely
branch drawing is at once true to Nature and subtly
composed ; as a piece of rich and delicate colour, it is
beyond praise ; and the whole has a haunting intensity,
yet is full of that decorative quality which runs like music
through all this painter's work."

68 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

One can but wish that the large picture to illustrate
Keats' " La Belle Dame sans Merci " had been carried
to completion. The mystic atmosphere of the poem, the
dim land of fantasy, lit by the light that never was on sea
or land : what artist could have rendered these for us
with half the sympathetic power of Wilson ? But,
diffident of his own work, and impatient of some little
lack of success in attaining his ideal, he destroyed the
canvas. It was this constant seeking after further
perfection, a dissatisfaction with what had already been
achieved, that caused some of the blemishes in his
pictures — faults of drawing, for instance, and a certain
lack of freedom, produced by working and re-working in
an attempt to get the exact pose of the figure, the precise
gesture which would best express the ideal he had before
him. That he was really a fine and reverent draughtsman
of the figure is evident from the preliminary studies for
his pictures ; and it is a great pity that his strenuous
endeavours after a more perfect accomplishment should
have resulted (as it must be admitted that they some-
times did) in some slight lack of spontaneity.

In conclusion, it may be again noted that throughout
the work of George Wilson the atmosphere is essentially
ethereal. The rare air is that of a poet's world, the sun-
bathed Arcadia of nymph and faun, the mystic land of
faerie ; but the air is the open air, and not the perfumed
incense-laden breeze, that haunts the mind when one
thinks of Rossetti's superb conceptions, or Solomon's
mystically sensuous visions. He dreamed of beauty, and
he painted poems because he lived in them ; and though
he may not have been a painter of the highest rank,
though strength may not be the keynote of his art, the
world would have been the poorer lacking his exquisite
work.

CHAPTER VIII

PRE-RAPHAELISM AS A PERMANENT
INFLUENCE, I. :

ARTHUR HUGHES
NOEL PATON

IT seems to be the fate of many a painter, if he has
not the faculty of self-advertisement, to be ignored
*ven by those who might be supposed to know and to
:are about the only genuine art — the art which is
ndividual and spontaneous. How few people, in spite
}f the recent revival of interest in the Pre-Raphaelite
irtists, know the work of Arthur Hughes ; and yet he is
i>ne of the most sincere and delightful of the painters
vho work in England to-day. Too retiring in his
disposition, he has been content to work quietly, while
irtists with not one-half his charm and ability have risen
o popular success ; and though one may sympathise
vith an artist whose mood of mind and work is so little
self-assertive, one sympathises also with his hard fortune
n lacking the meed of attention and praise that surely
should be his. Born in 1830, he was quite a lad in 1848
it the foundation of the Brotherhood, and was never an
ictual member ; but being then and later intimately
tssociated with Millais, the Rossettis, Collins, Morris, and
>thers of the group, he became imbued with the same
pirit, and he has ever since been one of the most
consistent of their disciples. His beautiful Ophelia,
'phowing the forlorn maiden sitting distraught beside the

70 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

fateful brook, is original and pathetic ; and the Silver and
Gold, reproduced in these pages, is a very typical
example of his tender and gracious art, in which the
natural tints of the scene fall in with certain little
strangenesses of colour which the artist sometimes permits
himself. The Eve of St. Agnes was another important
work, a triptych illustrating Keat's beautiful poem ; and
of April Love Ruskin said : " Exquisite in every way :
lovely in colour, most subtle in the quivering expression
of the lips, and the sweetness of the tender face, shaken
like a leaf by winds upon its dew, and hesitating back
into peace."

Throughout all his art appeal is made to a delicate
and refined sense of beauty (and this may be to some
extent the cause of his lack of reputation) ; and in Good
Night (a companion picture to Silver and Gold) and
Home from Sea, this appeal is evident. The first shows
a sweet maiden looking at us over her shoulder with a
pair of very lovely blue eyes, and scattering flowers from
the hood of her cloak as she goes bedward. The other,
Home from Sea, which was shown at the Royal Academy
in 1863, is full of simple pathos. It represents a sailor lad
who has come home from sea to find some loved relation
dead ; and he is in the quiet village churchyard with his
sister, a gentle girl in black. Her sorrow has been
tempered by time, for long grass waves upon the
grave ; but his comes fresh, and in its terrible poign-
ancy he has flung himself into an attitude of bitter
anguish, and as the girl kneels tranquil and resigned,
he is lying on his face, abandoned to his grief.
This work was followed by The Lost Child, Springtide,
and The Guarded Bower-, and many other pictures of
religious or romantic inspiration from that date to the
present have been shown at the Academy, the Grosvenor,
and other galleries. But the vagaries of artistic reputation

AKTHUR HUG I IKS

ARTHUR HUGHES

APRIL LOVE

ARTHUR HUGHES— NOEL PATON 71

are strange in England, and Arthur Hughes, true artist
and true Pre-Raphaelite, has suffered more than most
men from lack of appreciation. Always sweet, always
wholesome, his work shows delicacy of feature, purity of
colour, truth of texture, poetic fancy. He rarely seems to
aim at dramatic force. It has been said that there are
mannerisms of composition and colour in his work, and
strength and power are alien to his art ; but the more
his pictures are seen, the stronger is the affection they
inspire. There is a sweetness and gentle grace in the
subjects, and a pleasing artistry in the accomplishment,
that speak for themselves. Why his name is so seldom
mentioned, and why his works lack the esteem that is
their undoubted due, who shall say ?

Graceful and delicate fancy is also the characteristic of
the art of Sir Noel Paton, who, intimately associated
at one time with Millais, was much impressed with the
work that the Pre-Raphaelites were doing ; so that,
agreeing with them as to the greater portion of the
theories they endeavoured to act up to, he consis-
tently emulated their achievements. Throughout a long
life (he was born at Dunfermline in 1821) the influence
of the movement has been obvious in his work ; and
whether in the religious pictures of later years, or the
delightful fairy canvases of his earlier period, loving care
and study are evident on every hand. It was in 1842-43
that Noel Paton came to London and worked at the
Academy Schools, but this was for quite a short time;
and indeed, both before and after that date, the artist's
systematic training was very slight, and ideas came
too thick and fast, perhaps, and clamoured for ex-
pression before the artist's technical accomplishments
were adequate. Endowed with the Celtic vividness of
imagination, it was no wonder that he was attracted in
his choice of subjects by the wild legends of the North,

72 ENGLJSH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

and by the charms of the realms of faerie. Gifted on
the other hand with an intensely thoughtful and religious
spirit, he has produced many very striking pictures
displaying notable allegorical conceptions, and deeply
devotional inspirations. As well as these, the artist has
painted a few pictures, such as the Home of 1856 and
the In Memoriam of two years later, which come within
another category, and may be said to be purely Pre-
Raphaelite, both in idea and execution. Home is a
beautifully-painted and deeply touching picture, which
shows the meeting of a guardsman with his wife and
mother on his return from the Crimea, the terrible tale
of the privations and sufferings of the campaign being
told in the soldier's face. In Memoriam is a scene from
the Indian Mutiny — the interior of a dungeon where
captive white women and children are confined, expecting
the nameless horrors of a cruel death, when they are
released by the Highlanders who burst into the prison.
Dawn: Luther at Erfurt dates from 1861, and is a
thoroughly . sound piece of painting, colour and modelling
being equally noteworthy. Highly wrought, brilliant
and vivacious, it is a very remarkable work : " On the
right of the picture is a massive golden crucifix, the
emblem of time on the one side of it and of mortality
on the other, above is the open window admitting the
fresh incoming day, the dawning light of which quenches
the lamp that hangs near it, and falls upon the hooded
monk in his study of the Holy Book, symbolising the
dawn of that light which he was to herald in by the
Reformation." It may be interesting to add to this
description that the face of Luther is based on an
authentic contemporary portrait of the great reformer.

Sir Noel Paton's pictures of fantasy or diablerie, which
it has been said have been painted by the artist as a
relaxation from the strain of the execution of his religious

SIR NOEL PATON, R.S.A.

7

THE BLUIDIE TRYSTE

SIR NOEL PATON, R.S.A.

DAWN LUTHER AT ERFURT

NOEL PATON 73

works, are replete with charm ; full of insight into the
graceful and delicate imagining of a great poet, as in the
pictures from the " Midsummer Night's Dream," or
imbued with a sympathetic appreciation of the quaint
folk-lore of a primitive people, as in The Fairy Raid.
This last picture, which is a very elaborate piece of
painting, is one of the best he ever executed, and it is
marked by an opulence of imagination and a completeness
of realisation that show the mind of the poet as well as
the hand of the artist. He has painted a moonlit
landscape on Midsummer Eve, and the long cavalcade of
the fairy queen bearing away a changeling, a sweet
human child. Elf, fairy, gnome, and sprite are all there,
peering between the massive trunks of the trees, gliding
among and hovering over the flowers and fungi that form
the undergrowth, and in the cold moonlight the distant
forms of grey Druidic stones stand stark. With these
works of poetic inspiration should be mentioned those
others which owe their origin to some legend of the days
of old, such as The Dowie Dens of Yarrow, Barthram's
Dirge, The Bluidie Tryste, and Lancelot and Guinevere ;
and whether the subject is drawn from old tradition or the
realms of pure fancy, it is evident that the artist's mind is
thoroughly attuned to his theme.

Of his pictures of religious or allegorical significance,
there is perhaps not so much to say ; and, though more
popular and more widely known than the other works
which have been alluded to, these homilies in pigment are
not the highest manifestations of the artist's talents.
Vigilate et Orate, which was painted for Her Majesty Queen
Victoria, is one of the best and most typical of these works,
and shows the scene at the coming of dawn in the garden
of Gethsemane, when Christ, returning after his hour of
trial, finds the three disciples asleep, despite his injunction
to watch and pray. Other works of the same class are

74 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Satan watching the Sleep of Christ, The Man of Sorrows,
and Vade Satana ; and though the sentiment of the
whole series is above reproach, still one is not moved as
one should be by great religious art ; they are the work
of a man of profoundly reverent mind, but they cannot
be said to be sublime masterpieces ; they are not inspired,
the artist does not give us an adequate conception of the
face of Christ ; in short, the whole task is one to tax
genius to its utmost, and Sir Noel Paton can scarcely
be said to have risen to the occasion. The less ambitious
efforts such as Mors Janua Vita, and The Man with the
Muck-rake, are much more successful ; they are frankly
allegories, and they appeal to the spectator both from the
literary aspect and from- many painter-like qualities of
technique.

Many honours have fallen to Sir Noel Paton. The
knighthood he received in 1866 might have been followed
in 1891, had he wished it, by the Presidency of the Royal
Scottish Academy, of which body he became an associate
in 1 847 ; but private reasons prevented his becoming a
candidate. Prolific throughout a long life, he has
produced, in addition to his painting, book illustrations,
works of sculpture, and volumes of poems ; a fine
draughtsman, and gifted with imaginative and poetic
force of a very high order, as a colorist he is not so
great, a defect possibly due to his lack of early training ;
and his true power shows itself in his pictures from the
realms of fancy, wholly delightful presentations of
myth and legend (and, perhaps in a less degree, in his
vividly-presented pictorial allegories), rather than in his
more ambitious and less successfully realised religious
conceptions.

W. L. WINDUS

BURD HELEN

CHAPTER IX

PRE-RAPHAELISM AS A PERMANENT
INFLUENCE, II.:

CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS

WILLIAM MORRIS

W. S. BURTON

W. LINDSAY WINDUS

MATTHEW JAMES LAWLESS

ROBERT MARTINEAU

W. J. WEBBE

THERE are many artists of the Pre-Raphaelite school
who are almost unknown outside the small circle of
students of this phase of English art, and to many even
of those who believe that it was to the Brotherhood and
their followers that we owe the inspiring influence that
has permeated and vivified the dry bones of our national
art, and who know well the work of Millais and Madox
Brown, of Sandys and Burne-Jones, the art of such men
as Windus and Burton is but little known. All the
pictures painted by the men whose names head this
chapter could be contained in a very small gallery. Some
curious fatality would seem to have attended them,
and it has been their fate to exhibit but scantily the
power that they possessed. An early death in the case
of Lawless, Collins, and Martineau, prevented the full
fruitage of their ability. The victims of adverse circum-
stances and private griefs, Burton and Windus have had
but little heart these many years to paint. And the

76 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

genius of William Morris showed itself not in pictorial
art, but in the many and diverse forms of decorative
beauty that will be ever associated with his name.
Unlike the artists who will be alluded to in the succeed-
ing chapter, and with whom Pre-Raphaelism was but a
passing phase of longer or shorter duration, in the minds
of these men it was a strong and permanent conviction
that prompted their endeavour after sincerity, and their
abhorrence of pictorial artifice and convention ; and
throughout all their work the same principles were
consistently acted upon. It matters not whether, as
with Charles Collins, the rich colour and masterly
technique of Millais were the fountain of inspiration, or
whether, as with Robert Martineau, the unflinching and
patient realism of Holman Hunt appealed to the follower's
mind ; the seed, from whatever source it came, fell upon
fruitful ground. It is true that the inception of the
practical protest against what they considered bad art was
not due to them, they did not lead in the van of the
revolt ; still, despite the fact that the sum-total of their
accomplishment is small, they painted pictures with many
remarkable qualities, and it is time that the extent of
their achievement should be recognised.

Charles Allston Collins was the son of William Collins,
R.A., and the brother of Wilkie Collins, and was much
attracted, as has been said, by the work of Millais, in
whose style he painted. The picture of The Pedlar, here
reproduced, gives an adequate idea of his art, and though
he was not a great painter, the tendency to stiffness which
mars such work of his as Convent Thoughts and A Girl
with Flowers may fairly be considered a mark of
immaturity which in time he might have overcome, had
he not practically abandoned painting and turned his
attention to literature some time before his early death.
Which his real metier was, and whether, with his inherited

CHARLES A. COLLINS

CONVENT THOUGHTS

COLLINS— MORRIS— BURTON 77

artistic talent, he might not have ultimately produced
much finer work, it would be futile now to inquire.

William Morris used but rarely to express his feeling
for the beautiful in pictorial guise, and it may be that we
owe him more as the originator of a true decorative art
(using the word in its widest sense) of a very original and
satisfying kind, than we should if he had turned his
attention to the production of pictures instead of
magnificent tapestries and superb stained glass. At the
same time, the very charming Queen Guenevere makes
one wish that he had spared a little more time from his
labours as a craftsman to devote it to more purely creative
work. This picture shows a minstrel playing on a lute,
while the Queen stands before her toilet table putting
on her girdle ; she wears a white dress with pink
embroidery and red sleeves, and a wreath of flowers
adorns her head. The whole work evinces much power
and facility, together with a feeling for rich and strong
colour, while there is an individual poetic quality to be
seen in it, akin to, but distinct from, the note that marks
the earlier pictures of Rossetti.

An almost forgotten artist of singular power and
originality is W. S. Burton, whose great picture The
Wounded Cavalier has seemed to many one of the finest
works ever painted in England under the Pre-Raphaelite
influence. That he has painted so little is a matter for
very keen regret, and all lovers of sincere and original
work will rejoice to know that though for many years he
produced next to nothing, he has resumed the practice
of his art, and is now again exhibiting pictures which
are thoroughly characteristic of the man and his creed.
Contemptuous of all pictorial artifice, and scorning all
artistic trickery, he bade fair in his early days to rise to
very great heights ; but adverse fortune and ill-health
have been his lot, while private sorrows and lack of

78 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

recognition have saddened him. He was a student
at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won the gold
medal for historical painting ; and when he was only
twenty-six years of age The Wounded Cavalier (which
was first shown at the Academy in 1856) excited con-
siderable attention, not only from the character of the
picture, but because it was catalogued without title or
artist's name, a mystery which has only just been
elucidated by the painter himself. This remarkable
work, which hung on the line, next to Holman Hunt's
Scapegoat, may be taken as crystallising the artist's
practice and principles at that time, principles that he
has consistently adhered to. The subject is a Cavalier
whose despatches have been stolen from him as he jour-
neyed through a wood, while he, sorely wounded, has
been left to die, until later a Puritan and his lady pass
by, and the latter stops to tend the wounded man, while
her jealous lover looks sourly on. The desperate plight
of the Cavalier is shown in his death-like countenance,
while the pitiful face of the Puritan maiden, which is full
of charm, strong, yet tender and replete with compassion,
may be compared with the face of the lady in The
Proscribed Royalist — the anxious glance of eyes that
have wept, depicted by Millais in such masterly fashion.
Altogether this is a superb picture, full of dramatic vigour
and fine in colour, and both strong and refined in drawing,
while the technique is marvellous, and the master's hand
is seen in the way in which all hardness is avoided,
although the lichen on the tree trunks, the spider's web,
the broken sword, the bracken, and the other details gene-
rally, are painted with most minute fidelity and precision.
Later works by W. S. Burton were A London Magdalen,
The Angel of Death, and William TelPs Son ; while still
more recently the artist has exhibited Faithful unto Death,
and The King of Sorrows. The former work shows the

W. S. BURTON

THE WORLD'S GRATITUDE

W. S. BURTON 79

ictim of an auto-da-ft clothed in the horrid robes that
rnark the recalcitrant heretic, about to be crowned by a
nonk with the mitre head-dress worn in the procession
Dy those about to suffer martyrdom, and is a very note-
worthy picture, as strong in drawing as in sentiment.
Even more beautiful is the small work, The World's
Gratitude^ a picture of the finest quality, which shows
:he sad questioning face of Christ behind prison bars:
his may fairly be said to be one of the very few entirely
successful faces of the Saviour in recent art — the aspect
)f superhuman knowledge is there, as well as the human
md tender sorrow for the world that knows him, but
<eeps him barred away while it goes about its business.
Some works of Burton's have perished, others have never
n carried to completion, so severe is his self-criticism;
md though it is possible that we may be able to welcome
n the future other pictures of religious inspiration from
:his artist, it is lamentable to think of the many unpainted
masterpieces we might have had from his brush during the
Drime of his manhood, had not fate willed otherwise. The
ew pictures we have are evidence of ability of a very high
Drder indeed, as delicate in handling as they are strong
n drawing, as original in their conception as they are
sincere in execution; and we can ill spare the accom-
Dlished work of such an artist, honest both as a man and

painter, and entirely contemptuous and intolerant of all
hams and trickeries.

An almost exactly parallel career is that of William
^indsay Windus, a Liverpool artist, who at one time
ittracted considerable notice by his sound and refined
vork. He painted subjects of sentiment, Biird Helen
and Too Late, for example, in a thoroughly Pre-Raphaelite
nanner ; and also pseudo-historical subjects somewhat after
:he style of Cattermole, of which The Surgeon's Daughter
:S an example. But suddenly, owing, it is said, to a great

8o ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

sorrow, he left off painting, and nothing was seen of his
work till, in 1896, the New English Art Club startled
the picture loving public, who had thought Windus dead,
by showing three unfinished works of his on their walls.
What the veteran Pre-Raphaelite was doing in that gallery
was a question not easy to answer, but the little pictures,
incomplete as they were, were gems of their kind. Living
retired from the world, he has not sought public notice,
and, as in the case of W. S. Burton, to look for a typical
example of his work one must go back to the earlier years
of his artistic career. Too Late was painted in 1858, and
represents a poor girl in the last stage of consumption
whose lover had gone away, to return at last, led by a
little child, when it was "too late." Madox Brown said
of this work: "The expression of the dying face is quite
sufficient — no other explanation is needed." The subject
of Burd Helen, painted two years earlier, was taken from
the old Scottish ballad of the girl who ran by the side of
her faithless lover's horse while he rode, and swam the
Clyde, rather than he should escape. Ruskin's remarks
on this picture are entirely true. He says: "The work is
thoughtful and intense in the highest degree. The
pressure of the girl's hand on her side, her wild, firm,
desolate look at the stream — she not raising her eyes as
she makes her appeal, for fear of the greater mercilessness
in the human look than in the glaze of the gliding water
—the just choice of the type of the rider's cruel face, and
of the scene itself, so terrible in haggardness of rattling
stones and ragged heath, are all marks of the actions of
the very grandest imaginative power, shortened only of^
hold upon our feelings because dealing with a subject too.
fearful to be for a moment believed true." Windus's
works are few ; The Young Duke, The Outlaw, and the
very beautiful little drawing entitled The Flight of
Henry VI. after Towton have been seen at lo<

8o ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

sorrow, he left off painting, and nothing was seen of his
work till, in 1896, the New English Art Club startled
the picture loving public, who had thought Windus dead,
by showing three unfinished works of his on their walls.
What the veteran Pre-Raphaelite was doing in that gallery
was a question not easy to answer, but the little pictures,
incomplete as they were, were gems of their kind. Living
retired from the world, he has not sought public notice,
and, as in the case of W. S. Burton, to look for a typical
example of his work one must go back to the earlier years
of his artistic career. Too Late was painted in 1858, and
represents a poor girl in the last stage of consumption
whose lover had gone away, to return at last, led by a
little child, when it was "too late." Madox Brown said
of this work: "The expression of the dying face is quite
sufficient — no other explanation is needed." The subject
of Burd Helen , painted two years earlier, was taken from
the old Scottish ballad of the girl who ran by the side of
her faithless lover's horse while he rode, and swam the
Clyde, rather than he should escape. Ruskin's remarks
on this picture are entirely true. He says: "The work is
thoughtful and intense in the highest degree. The
pressure of the girl's hand on her side, her wild, firm,
desolate look at the stream — she not raising her eyes as
she makes her appeal, for fear of the greater mercilessness
in the human look than in the glaze of the gliding water
—the just choice of the type of the rider's cruel face, and
of the scene itself, so terrible in haggardness of rattling
stones and ragged heath, are all marks of the actions of
the very grandest imaginative power, shortened only of
hold upon our feelings because dealing with a subject too
fearful to be for a moment believed true." Windus's
works are few ; The Young Duke, The Outlaw, and the
very beautiful little drawing entitled The Flight of
Henry VI. after Towton have been seen at loan

WINDUS— LAWLESS— WEBBE 81

exhibitions in recent years ; but is it too much to hope
that he may yet give us more pictures as strong and
masculine, as full of enthusiasm and refinement as those
that have been alluded to ?

Matthew James Lawless, who was born at Dublin in
1837, died too young to have ever shown to the full his
artistic powers. He went during his pupilage to various
art schools in London, finally studying under Henry
O'Neil, R.A., and though hampered by deafness and
constant ill-health, he produced during his short life book
illustrations (for The Cornhill Magazine, Once a Week
and kindred publications) of a very high order ; and
after trying various styles, he seemed to be settling
down into an individual method, when consumption
claimed him as its victim, and he died in 1864. The
j picture in which he really showed his power was The
Sick Call, exhibited at the Royal Academy the year
before he died. It represents a scene in the waning light
of evening — a priest who is crossing a river in a boat,
taking the host to render the last offices to a dying
person, and accompanied by his white-robed acolytes,
and the weeping woman who has fetched him ; while the
towers and spires of the town on the river bank rise clear
into the still air. This is a picture full of quiet feeling
and gentle charm, simple and refined in the highest
degree, and, had he lived, there is no doubt that Lawless
would have produced still more noteworthy work. As it
is, his reputation is deservedly high.

A brief allusion to two artists who were much influenced
in their work by that of Holman Hunt must close this
section. One of these was W. J. Webbe, whose very
pleasing little picture of Lambs at Play might almost
be taken for the work of the artist of The Strayed Sheep
himself. The other was a painter whose early death was
a distinct loss to art — Robert Martineau. Martineau's
F

82 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

work at one time attracted considerable attention ; to-day
he is almost forgotten ; but his painting approaches his
master's very closely in quality and technique. He
painted very slowly and conscientiously, and only
produced three or four pictures of importance before he
died. The Lesson, a picture illustrating a scene in
Dickens' " Old Curiosity Shop," Katharina and Petruchio,
and The Last Day in the Old Home, are good examples
of his patient and laborious skill ; and the last, which is
rather a large work, recently acquired by the National
Gallery of British art, is reproduced in these pages.

CHAPTER X

PRE-RAPHAELISM AS A PHASE:

HENRY WALLIS
JOHN BRETT
HENRY MOORE
G. D. LESLIE
G. A. STOREY
VAL PRINSEP
J. D. WATSON

P. H. CALDERON
W. FETTES DOUGLAS
HUGH CAMERON
WILLIAM M'TAGGART
JAMES TISSOT
J. F. LEWIS

T TNDOUBTEDLY, Pre-Raphaelism in the fifties and
J sixties was a living and moving force of no mean
order, and many an artist succumbed for a longer or
a shorter time to its influence. To some of them to-day,
t is a matter for a sort of half-tolerant joke, an episode
n a career to be somewhat ashamed of; others recognise
rankly, that if from one cause or another it was an
mpracticable gospel, still, its power was distinctly for
good. It tended to overthrow the mawkish mediocrity
Ithat was almost entirely usurping the field of art ; while
it substituted an ideal that at least had the merit of
honesty and spontaneity, a desire to be original and not
the product of a workshop for the manufacture of painters,
and a gospel that said, " not failure but low aim is crime."
Such a crusade against crusted prejudices needs en-
thusiasm to embark upon it, and strong convictions to
carry it on, and enthusiasts are not always judicious.
They are just as prone to excess in the field of art as
[elsewhere ; still, progress does not come of half-hearted-

84 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

ness, and one can forgive many crudities of expression
for the sake of the honesty of the aim, aud many errors
may be overlooked in the preacher when the doctrine
smacks of truth. If there had been no necessity for the
reaction, it would not have existed, not to say, succeeded \t
and though the first efforts of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood and their entourage provoked scorn and laughter
from the public and the critics, many artists saw that
there was something in the movement. They learnt
one lesson, to go to Nature, and copy her details as
stepping-stones to her greater truths ; they learnt, too,
the value of imagination as a factor in art, and the
young artists who banded themselves together in that
Brotherhood initiated a movement which was in a great
measure the salvation of English art.

To-day there are too many " movements," and such an
agitation as the Pre-Raphaelites started would attract
little, if any, attention. In the stagnant state of the arts
at the period spoken of, it was as the troubling of the
waters, and there was healing in the troubling. At that
time, the elderly Gandishes who believed in "history
painting" and the " grand style," and who also believed
that the acquisition of this " grand style " was a matter
of teaching, of rule and method, were, of course, aghast
at the militant enthusiasm for quite other ideals and
doctrines displayed by the small band of brothers ; but,
of the younger men, many were quick to discern that
many forgotten truths lay behind the immature ex-
pressions of their creed achieved by these as yet
imperfectly trained artists. Later, when the seed sown
in the minds of the original Pre-Raphaelites blossomed
into the full flower of such work as The Proscribed
Royalist, and The Last of England, and the other
masterpieces of the next decade, many painters who
either fell under the personal influence of the Pre-

PRE-RAPHAELISM AS A PHASE 85

Raphaelites and their associates, or whose minds
responded to the ideals that they set before them,
bestirred themselves, and also honestly endeavoured to
put the best that was in them into the work that they
did. They saw that a paucity of flimsy ideas and a few
rules of thumb were not the equipment with which to
produce great art, and they recognised that technical
skill must be allied to dignity, or, at any rate, honesty of
conception, if a picture is to be anything more than a piece
of mere craftsmanship, of uninspired manipulative ability.
As has been said, with gome artists the Pre-Raphaelite
phase was but a momentary mood, the result of an
impression that was far from permanent ; with others,
the mental result has been more lasting, though their
later work has ceased to partake of the definite character
which is associated with the term Pre-Raphaelite. In
some cases, too, the painter's individual aims and ideals
have been quite other than those animating the original
members of the Brotherhood ; and in many instances
artists have outgrown the manipulative practice that is
exemplified in the work of Holman Hunt and Strudwick,
and the laborious care bestowed upon the pictures of
early years falls into place as part of the student's
curriculum, and is abandoned after having served its
purpose in the attainment of a mastery of technical
methods. It would be folly to impugn an artist's right
to paint in the way that pleases him best, his duty to
himself is to express his own creed in his own way ; but
the fact that the Pre-Raphaelite phase can be seen in the
careers of so many painters is interesting, because it is
an additional proof of the strength and extent of the
influence exerted on contemporary art by the school—
an influence so far-reaching, indeed, that its traces can
be noted in the work of many painters who never were in
any way ostensible followers of the Brotherhood, but who

86 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

yet recognised the essential truth of the creed its members
advocated.

In this section, necessarily a brief one, it would be
impossible to attempt any account of the careers of the
various artists who have been spoken of above in general
terms ; all that can be given is a note on some of the
pictures from their easels painted under Pre-Raphaelite
influence. Much of the work of Henry Wallis betrays
this influence, and the beautiful Chatterton, as well as
The Return from Marston Moor and Marten at Chepstow
Castle, are examples of very sincere and delightful art.
Of the first of these Ruskin said that it was " Faultless
and wonderful ; a most noble example of the great school.
Examine it well, inch by inch ; it is one of the pictures
which intend and accomplish the entire placing before
your eyes of an actual fact — and that a solemn one." The
enthusiasm of the same critic was also roused by The
Stonebreaker^ by John Brett, now A.R.A., and his words
may fitly be quoted in this connection. He said, " I
know no such thistledown, no such chalk hills and elm
trees, no such natural pieces of far-away cloud. . . . The
composition is palpably crude, and wrong in many ways,
especially in the awkward little white cloud at the top,
and the tone of the whole is a little too much as if some
of the chalk of the flints had been mixed with the colours.
For all that it is a marvellous picture, and may be
examined inch by inch with delight." This painter's
pictures still show more than a trace of his early
enthusiasm, and the beautiful seascapes that he has
accustomed us to expect year after year are full of
most searching and careful work, full, too, of the love
and reverence for Nature that was one of the guiding
stars of the schools. It is curious to note that both our
great sea-painters of this generation passed through a
Pre-Raphaelite period, for the small example of Henry

G. A. STOREY, A.R.A.

WALLIS— BRETT— LESLIE 87

Moore's work reproduced in these pages is thoroughly
in accord with the principles of the Brotherhood. But
John Brett did what few ventured to do, he carried the
tenets of the Pre-Raphaelites into the painting of
landscapes — a task of enormous difficulty — and those
who have seen his Val cFAosta know how successfully,
this marvellous landscape being a veritable tour-de-force,
indeed a thing almost unique. It is curious to note,
when one comes to consider, how few painters have
succumbed to the influence of the school in depicting
pure landscape ; and yet Holman Hunt, in his Hireling
Shepherd, showed once for all that their principles were
as applicable to landscape art as to romantic figure
pictures. One thinks of J. W. Inchbold, of Thomas
Seddon, of William Davis, of Waller Paton, R.S.A., and
the list is closed of those who have painted landscapes
face to face with Nature, and painted them with the
elaborate fidelity demanded by the Pre-Raphaelite
tenets. Perhaps the remark of the critic who stigma-
tised the latter as "the Coryphaeus of the Chinese
school " has deterred our younger artists from attempting
the same thing.

The early work of three other present members of the
Royal Academy must also be alluded to in this chapter
— G. D. Leslie, Val Prinsep, and G. A. Storey. They
were noble dreams that inspired such a picture as Leslie's
Dante's Leah, and no artist was ever the worse for the
intellectual effort that prompted him to begin, and enabled
him to execute, work of such quality. Poetically con-
ceived, and beautifully wrought, such a picture lingers in
the memory ; and a similar intensity of feeling marks
such pictures by G. A. Storey as The Annunciation, A
Song of the Past, and The Burial of the Bride. The
rich colour and close technique of these beautiful works
betray the artist's admiration of the earlier pictures of

88 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Millais, and though this phase of inspiration has passed,
the painter's canvases show to-day that the influence was,
in his case, by no means an ephemeral one. Side by
side with these we may class Val Prinsep's Bianco. Capello,
and Whispering Tongues can Poison Truth, and the other
pictures painted under the direct personal inspiration of
Rossetti ; and these pictures are by no means the worst
that the versatile artist has produced— clear, sharp
painting and graceful composition are their charac-
teristics, as well as a very real and poetic imagination.
The same qualities are apparent in the work of another
artist of this group, and such pictures as J. D. Watson's
Bubbles, and The Garden Seat, painted in 1856 and'
1858 respectively, as well as the same artist's woodcut
designs of about this date, are full of delicate feeling and
fancy, and really call for more than the passing allusion
permitted here by the exigencies of space. There are in
connection with this group of artists, two other painters
who must be mentioned as having been attracted by the
work of the Pre-Raphaelites — H. W. B. Davis, R.A., whose
earlier landscapes are strongly influenced by the tenets of
the Brethren and their associates, and the late Philip
Calderon, R.A. Once, at least, the latter artist, moved by
the prevalent excitement, painted in the style they advocated
and practised ; Broken Vows, the work in question, was
highly successful when it was exhibited in 1857,
and although with this painter the phase was but a
passing one of short duration, this picture, and the success
attending it, afford another piece of evidence as to the
working of the leaven in the minds both of artists and
public.

The late J. M. Gray, the scholarly keeper of the Scottish
National Portrait Gallery, once made a suggestive remark
as to the unnoticed extent to which Pre-Raphaelite in-
fluence had affected the work of Scottish painters. Apart

SIR W. FETTES DOUGLAS, P.R.S.A.

THE RECUSANT'S CONCEALMENT

VAL C. PRTNSEP. R.A.

Whispej'ing tongues can poison trut/i,
And to be wrath with one we've lovc
Doth work like Poison on the brain "

SCOTTISH PAINTERS 89

from the pictures of Sir Noel Paton, already treated of,
Pre-Raphaelism is strongly evident in the work of Sir
William Fettes Douglas, P.R.S.A. As in the case of
J. F. Lewis, it is not in the works of his youthful days
that this phase of his artistic development may be traced,
but rather in the period of his early maturity. Later, his
works became analogous (like those of many other Scottish
painters) to the genre pictures of the Dutch school, but
for a long time, as Mr Gray observed, his pictures
manifested " by their delicate and exquisitely refined
finish, by their force of pure, lovely colouring, by their
frequent quaintness of form and costume, and by the
sometimes odd and segmental style of their composition,
a distinct affinity with the work of the English Pre-
Raphaelites. His treatment of rustic child-life in Little
Dot, The Match-Seller, and the large Cottage Interior,
Borrowdale, is analogous to that which we find in the
class of works centrally represented by The Blind Girl of
John Millais ; and the more romantic and mediaeval phase
of Pre-Raphaelism finds a kindred expression in paintings
like The Ruby Ring, The Tapestry Worker, The Spell,
and many others."

Again, in such Scottish pictures as Going to the Hay,
by Hugh Cameron, R.S.A., one finds a work "as perfectly
Pre-Raphaelite in the best sense of the word, as could be
desired — full of the most delicate, finished, and sensitive
expression of detail — not a single corner in the tender
sprays of the briar-hedge is slurred over, not a spot is
missed on the expanded wings of the butterfly, yet the
whole is in right relation." Only a passing allusion can
be made to the Arthurian subjects of James Archer, which
re-echo the imaginative inspiration of his English con-
freres, and to the Pre-Raphaelite influence as expressed
in the earlier work of Joseph Henderson ; arid the
extraordinary divergence between the early and highly

90 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

wrought work of William M'Taggart, R.S.A., and his
later superlatively loose and suggestive handling, can
only be briefly spoken of here. No one who saw The
Thorn in the Foot by the side of The Storm, or When
the Boats come in, could believe that the same artist had
painted them ; but the extreme freedom and breadth of
handling of M'Taggart's later work is, if not the result,
at any rate the consequence, of a scrupulous exactitude
and fidelity to the details of Nature in his earlier days.
No doubt this painter's broad, free, and masterly style is
the truer expression of his individuality ; but it is curious
to note how wide the difference is between his pictures
admittedly painted under Pre-Raphaelite influence and
those of to-day.

The influence of the school has extended by now
beyond our own country, and is obviously apparent in
the pictures of many Dutch, Belgian, and French artists ;
and although a consideration of the work of this Con-
tinental following cannot be undertaken here, allusion
may be made to the work of a Frenchman, who practised
so long in this country as to be legitimately included
among English artists. The versatile and popuh
painter, James Tissot, at one time distinctly fell under
the spell of the Brotherhood and their followers, and such
pictures as The Triumph of Will, and The Convalescem
are as Pre-Raphaelite, both in conception and execution,
as may be ; the flowers to which The Convalescent stretches
out a weak hand might almost have bloomed in the garden
of Mariana or the meadows of the Hireling Shepherd.

In the case of nearly all the artists alluded to thus
briefly in this chapter, the tendency to Pre-Raphaelism
was a youthful one, and, though its results are still more
or less evident in their work, it has been ostensibly
abandoned by all in later years. But the reverse was
the case with another painter of note, John Frederick

HUGH CAMERON, R.S.A.

JOSEPH HENDERSON, R.S.W.

THE BALLAD

W. M'TAGGART, R.S.A.

THE THORN IN THE FOOT

J. F. LEWIS 91

Lewis, R.A., who, though not of them, must still be
placed beside the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Born in
1805, in his earlier years he was known as "Spanish
Lewis," from the source of his artistic inspiration ; but, at
the age of forty-five, after many unproductive years spent
in the East, he spontaneously developed a new style
almost absolutely coincident as to date with the first
manifestations of the Pre-Raphaelite spirit in the work of
Millais and Holman Hunt, and almost identical as to
manner. Extreme elaboration and complexity of drawing,
splendid colour and breadth of effect, mark the superb
work of this latest period ; while, saturated through many
years' residence in the East with the spirit of Orientalism,
there is a richness and sumptuousness of effect shown
throughout these pictures that place them in a class by
themselves. His diploma picture, The Door of a Cafe in
Cairo, is a good example of his art ; even finer is the
Lilium Auratum, which shows a richly attired Odalisque
and her attendant in the garden of a hareem, the lady
holding a costly vase with red and white roses in it, while
the young girl, evidently amused at something, also
carries flowers from the wilderness of lilies, poppies,
pansies, and fuchsias, through which they have come to
the rose-covered doorway of the garden. Other pictures
by this painter, The Doubtful Coin, The Turkish School,
A Street Scene in Cairo, The Arab Scribe, The Hareem,
show the same richness and elaboration, the same daring
juxtaposition of colour and skill in rendering textures, but
in a brief epitome like this space forbids a full considera-
tion of his art. It is true that his wonderful pictures, full
of jewel-like colour and superb handling, call for more
careful notice, but this brief account must suffice, although
another allusion may perhaps be permitted in conclusion
to the remarkable fact that, at the age of forty-five Lewis
developed a new method, which he consistently practised

92 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

to the end, entirely akin to that evolved by the ardent
youths who initiated the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In closing this section it may be well, in consequence
of the double meaning that is now unavoidably associated
with the word Pre-Raphaelite, to point out a fact which
is evident from the reproductions of the pictures described
in the last two chapters — namely, that the paintings of
the artists just treated of do not show as a whole, or in
any marked degree, the dominance of the later work of
Rossetti (as the pictures of Simeon Solomon and Burne-
Jones admittedly do), but display very clearly the
Pre-Raphaelite ideal as expressed by Millais and Holm;
Hunt. This, as has already been said, is the narrowei
and truer meaning of the term, and the works of the!
artists have been grouped together because they displa]
the influence of the creed as originally enunciatec
and followed by the members of the Brotherhood
succeeding chapters will exhibit the other use of th<
word in dealing with the school initiated by Dante
Rossetti and continued by Burne-Jones — a tradition ol
style rather than an artistic creed. This is a tradition
that exists in connection with certain types of beauty,
that implies poetry of conception and sumptuousness of
presentment as shown in purely ideal works ; the other
was a doctrine which insisted upon absolute veracity and
sincerity in the depiction of actualities, as an essential of
living art.

J. F. LEWIS, R.A,

LILIUM AURATUM

CHAPTER XI
RE-RAPHAELITES AS DECORATORS:

FREDERIC SHIELDS
WALTER CRANE
WILLIAM BELL SCOTT

ELIGIOUS subjects scarcely seem to have appealed
to the majority of the Pre-Raphaelites in the same
y that romantic and poetic conceptions did ; but to one
them at least it has been as great a source of inspiration
to Sir Noel Paton. Frederic Shields, like Arthur
ughes, has been content to do his life's work in the
quietest and most unassuming manner, so that few people
j know what the extent of that work is ; a result due,
perhaps, to the fact that in pictorial art, in the strictest
| sense of the word, he has done comparatively little,
though as a decorator he takes very high rank. His
illustrations to Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress " showed
marked power and originality, and that earnestness which
has been the characteristic of his art as of his life from
boyhood onwards. His first effort from the life, he says,
was a portrait of his mother, done in "true Byzantine
style," but it was long before he found his true vocation
as a religious decorative designer ; and while the very
beautiful work that he has accomplished in the private
chapels of Sir W. H. Houldsworth at Kilmarnock (illus-
trating The Triumph of Faith) and the Duke of West-
minster at Eaton Hall (from the Te Deum Laudamus), in
glass and mosaic, is but little known, the fine series of wall

94 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

decorations that adorn the chapel in the Bayswater Road
are accessible to all, and by these the artist can be judged.
The one that is illustrated in this volume is Jonah, in
which the prophet, to quote the artist's own words,
"appears as rising out of the jaws of the sea monster,
which, turned upon its back, its life-blood gurgling from
its nostrils, dies in the disgorgement of its prey, even as
its great antitype, Christ Jesus, by submitting to be
swallowed up, of death, destroyed 'him that had the
power of death, that is, the devil.' The sea-weeds that
make a chaplet about his brow allude to his own prayer:
'The depths closed me round about, the weeds were
wrapped about my head.' " The religious turn of
this painter's mind is evinced by other works — Christ
and Peter, The Good Shepherd, Love and Time, and
Solomon Eagle, among others ; the last subject taken
from " Old St Paul's," being a sermon on the text " Arise,
or be for ever fallen," and shows the half-demented en-
thusiast who, with his burning brazier, went through
London during the great plague, denouncing the evil-
doing of the people and exhorting them to repentance.
Of Frederic Shields it has been well said that " he is an
artist in every nerve ; but he is much more." His own
creed is that art demands sanctification, and that purity of
heart and mind are essential to the production of noble
results, and, added to this reverence of soul and sincerity
of purpose, he possesses artistic powers of no mean order ;
the consequence is that, though all his life he has practised
his art within certain narrow limits, within those self-set
bounds his work, firm in drawing, exalted and vigorous in
conception, is characteristic of the man.

Another decorator who must be included among the
Pre-Raphaelites, although the influences to be discerned
in his work are many, is Walter Crane. Born in Liverpool
in 1835, his father was a miniature painter of ability, as

u

rf

I

FREDERIC SHIELDS

JONAH

WALTER CRANE 95

'ell as a practitioner in oils, and the son at a very tender
ge, evinced a strong artistic tendency. So early as the
ge of twelve, when Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford was
anging at the Royal Academy in the year 1857, the boy's
mpathies were attracted by the colour, the poetry, and
e style of this great work ; and this accordance of feeling
tween Walter Crane and the Pre-Raphaelite painters
as existed from that day to this, for it is only quite
ently that he showed a work, Summer, depicting a
arming maiden reclining among the ox-eye daisies in a
ay-field, which is as thoroughly Pre-Raphaelite a piece
f painting as can be desired. But although so early as
862 he showed a picture at the Academy (an event only
nee repeated in Mr Crane's career, when in 1872 a
icture of his was hung), for some years yet he was
student rather than a practising artist. Heatherley's in
ewman Street, and the studio of W. S. Linton, the wood
graver (to whom he was apprenticed), were his chief
hools ; and from this basis, influenced now by Japanese
rt, now by Renaissance, now by the English Pre-
aphaelites, and now by the Greek marbles, he evolved
at definite and individual style of his which is known
and wide. The decorative work he has done is
normous, and the mediums he has practised in are too
any to enumerate ; but through all the products of his
tense activity runs the characteristic method, original,
otent, artistic. But of his designs for pottery and
brics, for books and metal works, it is impossible to
peak here ; and but briefly can allusion be made to the
ictures that have come from his easel with unfailing
gularity. The Sirens, which was shown at the Grosvenor
allery in 1879, is a very typical piece of his work, in
hich the principal place in a very delicate colour scheme
f pale orange and blue is, of course, given to the suave
jind graceful forms of the three malign sisters who, dancing

96 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

on the sea-shore, seek to lure the shipmates of Odysseus
from their high-prowed bark to a cruel doom. Later, in
1882, The Roll of Fate, a subject from the Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam, was shown, in which the artist depicts
a winged messenger, who kneels at the feet of Fate, and
strives in vain to make that "stern recorder" cease
his writing on the scroll. The flowing lines of the
picture, the colour of marble steps, golden throne, pearly
wings, and distant sea, and the rhythmical feeling per-
vading the whole composition combine to make a beautiful
piece of decoration. Earlier than these were Ormuzd and
Ariman, The Red Cross Knight in Search of Una, Endy-
mion, A Daughter of the Vine, and others ; while succeeding
years brought Diana and the Shepherd, The Bridge of Life
(a simple and telling allegory), Pandora, and Freedom ;
while of a still later date may be mentioned Neptune's
Horses, The Rainbow and the Wave, that very noble com-
position, The Chariots of the Hours, and the delightful
Renascence of Venus.

Every credit must be given to the artist for his enor-
mous fecundity, and the industry which enables him to
accomplish so much ; but hasty production, and especially
over-production (a fault that many think that Walter Crane
must plead guilty to), have manifold disadvantages. Grace
of composition, skilful disposition of forms, draperies, and
accessories, and flowing beauty of line, are such constant
elements in his work that we accept them as a matter of
course, and are not always duly grateful ; but hurry
begets carelessness, it results in draughtmanship that is
not always irreproachable, and colour that is not always
happy ; and though the artist has an uninterrupted flow
of ideas, he cannot possibly carry them all to completion,
however industrious he may be. The consequence is, that,
although all painters may be said to repeat themselves
more or less, in Walter Crane's case style is apt to

WALTER CRANE

THE ROLL OF FATE

W. BELL SCOTT 97

degenerate into mannerism, the literary element is perhaps
unduly obtruded, and the decorative charm which may
well be an underlying constituent in all pictures, becomes
the dominant element. These easel paintings, judged as
such, are not altogether satisfying, though considered as
decoration, they have very great beauty and charm. The
artist himself does not draw " any hard and fast line
between pictorial work and other work," and his practice
is consistent with this attitude ; but critics who do not care
for allegory, who think that pictures should show relief
and express atmospheric values, naturally say that com-
positions which lack these essentials, which depend upon
their literary appeal and their pleasing arrangements of
line, can only be considered as decorative and not as
pictorial art. But even if, considered pictorially, the
artist's work does not appeal to all, it cannot be denied
that, decoratively, Walter Crane's achievement is very
fine, spirited, imaginative, well-balanced, and thoroughly
original.

One other artist who should be alluded to in this con-
nection is William Bell Scott, inasmuch as his chief work
consisted of more than one series of mural decorations ;
and he displays his powers more adequately in these than
|in some of the easel pictures he painted. He was born at
[Edinburgh in 1811, and died at Penkill in 1890, leaving
L posthumously-published autobiography which aroused a
[considerable amount of feeling among his contemporaries,
is brother was the erratic and original genius, David
cott, and from him and their father, a well-known
graver, his first artistic instruction was obtained. Later,
e " Trustee's Academy " and the British Museum were
he fields in which he worked, and from 1840 onwards
e find him occasionally exhibiting at various London
alleries. Of his oil paintings a typical example is The
Eve vf the Deluge, now in the National Gallery, in which
G

98 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

we see a princely personage, sitting on a terrace sur-
rounded by his attendants, while tiger cubs gambol at his
feet, and the empty goblet he holds, and the harp in the
hands of a slave, denote the recent feast. On the balcony
burns a jar of incense, and in the middle distance the
family of Noah are entering the ark, while from the
horizon rises a cloud, dark, and foreboding destruction.

But his most notable productions were the two series
of mural paintings he executed, the one at Penkill Castle,
illustrating The King's Quhair, and the other at Walling-
ton, an old manor-house in Northumberland. Here, on
the walls of a cortile, he painted a set of eight large com-
positions illustrative of scenes from Northumbrian history,
two of the most striking being those which depict King
Egfrid offering the Bishopric of Hexham to St Cuthbert
and The Death of Bede. This last shows the death of the
venerable monk as he finished the dictation of his trans-
lation of the Gospel of St John. Sorrow-stricken brethrei
support his frame ; pigeons, types of dissolution, are flyinj
through the open windows, and the gusty wind has jusl
blown out the candle. It is a striking composition, th(
work of a man who was poet as well as painter, and wh<
in his art was probably influenced (if his self-centred mint
was influenced at all) by the painting of Ford Mado:
Brown, rather than by that of Dante Rossetti, who was his
more intimate friend. With the cartoons and frescoes
the former artist his mural decorations certainly seem t(
show an affinity ; and, while not always free from fault
of drawing, his work is possessed of no mean power
vigorous presentment, and there are certain novelties
of conception and a freedom from convention in his
productions that are distinctly attractive.

CHAPTER XII
THE ROSSETTI TRADITION, I:

EDWARD BURNE-JONES

THE two artists whose work has given rise to the
popular use of the word Pre-Raphaelite, as against
e legitimate use of the term, are undoubtedly Rossetti
and Burne-Jones. The proper application of the word to
xpress the aim of a group of artists who went straight to
e fount of Nature for teaching and inspiration, rather
han imbibing them from the polluted source of the con-
ention of the schools, became perverted to express (and
till does convey to the popular mind) the style of the two
at poetic painters who respectively inaugurated and
arried on a new and individual kind of art. This is
ccounted for by the fact that in the case of these two
rtists (maybe the most original spirits of all who were
nnected with the movement) the principles of Pre-
phaelism were applied to a class of picture but little
nown previous to their time, pictures of pure romance,
;of wonderland. The public knew that the painters of
(these pictures, now mystical and wan, now opulently
beautiful, but with the same exotic vein of poetry running
through all, were classed as belonging to the Pre-Raphael-
jites, and so the adjective became almost synonymous
With "Romantic," and still continues, for even to-day one
may hear classed as "Pre-Raphaelite" pictures which
;bear no affinity to the work of the Brotherhood except
in the chance choice of subjects from the realms of
romance and fantasy.

loo ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

For this reason it may be well to insist once more that
Sir Edward Burne-Jones was a Pre-Raphaelite, not by
reason of his choice of subjects from that world which is
"out of space and out of time," but from the consistent
adherence he gave to the principles of honesty and
sincerity enunciated by the Brotherhood ; disdaining alike
the artifices of the schools and the trickeries of prevalent
art, he sought to be himself, and to put into each canvas
that left his easel the best that was in him. The career
of this great painter was indeed a remarkable example of
unperverted directness of aim, of consistently strenuous
endeavour, and of successful achievement along the indi-
vidual lines laid down by himself. Uninfluenced by
contemporary art when once he set a goal before him,
throughout a long artistic career he was true to his
principles, and the consequence is that his life's work
forms an accomplished and coherent whole, in which
can be traced growth, development, and fruition.

He was born at Birmingham in 1833, and was of Welsh
descent on his father's side. There are those who see in
his works of mystery and romance the pictorial expression
of the poetic soul of the Celtic race, and this may be so.
He was the first member of his family to display any
artistic inclination, and this artistic tendency does not
appear to have been evident during his schooldays, or,
indeed, -until he met at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1852,
a young Welshman named William Morris, who had come
up to the University intending, as did Burne-Jones at
that date, to enter the Church. The acquaintance which
ensued grew rapidly, thanks to a deep sympathy in
literary and artistic matters, and developed into a friend-
ship of lifelong duration ; and their smouldering aspirations
needed but a spark to set them ablaze. This spark came
from a sight of a woodcut of Dante Rossetti's and a water-
colour drawing by the same artist, Dante drawing the

.

SIR E. BURNE-JONES, BART.

CLARA VON BORK

EDWARD BURNE-JONES 101

%ce of Beatrice. The poetic fancy and rich colouring of
is charming little picture — then in the possession of Mr
pombe of Oxford — appealed irresistibly to the admiration
|»f both, and together they resolved to embark on an
rtistic career. To the answering chord in the heart of
5urne-Jones that responded to the dream of Rossetti, the
•orld was to owe in later years such pictures as The Briar
lose series, and The Beguiling of Merlin. It was in the
ear 1855 that the young undergraduate came up to
.ondon with the intention of seeking out the painter
rhose work he deemed so admirable ; and Rossetti, when
e saw the dainty imagination and the feeling for beauty
i the drawings submitted to him, urged the untaught lad
:> drop all idea of taking his degree, and to devote himself
ntirely to art. This was done, and for some years there
as constant intercourse between the two young men.
Lossetti (who, it must be remembered, was only five years
le senior of the other) was doubtless not the best leader

> follow in the technical matters of art ; and Burne-Jones,
ho was already twenty-three, had to set himself resolutely

> work at the drudgery of the rudiments to make up for
>st years. But, if the older artist was not at his best as

teacher of drawing, he was an ideal friend as regards
ispiration ; no one was more fitted to encourage and
ssist the development of the mystic and spiritual art
hich is inalienably associated with the name of Burne-
ones.

It is usual to say that the ascendancy of Rossetti is
rident in the work of his pupil, and this is true in such
ictures as Sidonia von Bork> and Clara von Bork,
ater-colour illustrations of Meinhold's romance, which
light almost be taken for Rossetti's own work. But it
ould not be correct to conclude, from the similarity of
noice of subject and poetic aspect which pervades the
fork of both artists, that the elder painter imposed his

102 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

personality on that of the younger; rather one must
think of them as kindred souls who were fortunate enough
to meet early in life, and to mutually inspire and influence
each other. Another example of the period when Burne
Jones based much work on that of his leader is the picture
of The Backgammon Players, a knight and lady sitting
with the board between them in a garden of flowers,
fenced in with a trellis of roses. This little work is
redolent of the art of Rossetti, but that this influence was
neither paramount nor permanent is evident from an
extremely beautiful and individual drawing completed in
1863 (the year after The Backgammon Players), and
called The Merciful Knight. This charming and tender
work illustrates the old Florentine legend of S. Giovanni
Gualberto, the knight of old who rode out on Good
Friday to avenge his brother's death, but spared his
enemy and forgave him when he asked for mercy in the
name of Christ who had died on the cross on that day.
Later, as on the hill of San Miniato the merciful knight
knelt before the wayside crucifix, the carven effigy of the
Saviour bent to kiss him, and the miracle moved him to
abandon the profession of arms for a holy life.

A long series of works in oils, tempera, water-colour,
and other mediums came from this artist's studio during
the course of the succeeding years ; and a multitude of
wonderful and beautiful studies in all mediums, and
scores of cartoons for stained glass, mosaic, and tapestry,
attest his unceasing industry. Allusion can only be made
to the titles of a few pictures which are typical in one way
or another; those who have seen them will need no
description to recall such works as Green Summer, The
Wine of Circe, Le Chant d? Amour, The Annunciation
(this theme was more than once chosen, the interpretations
being quite different), Love among the Ruins, The Mill,
The Wheel of Fortune, the Pygmalion series, Cupid and

3IR E. BURNE-JONES, BART.

THE MERCIFUL KNIGHT

EDWARD BURNE-JONES 103

*syche, Pan and Psyche, The Days of Creation, The
beguiling of Merlin, The Feast of Peleus, The Mirror
>f Venus, Laus Veneris, The Golden Stairs, Dies Domini,
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, Perseus and the
Iraice, and The Depths of the Sea. The contrast between
tie rich play of colour, as of a casket of jewels, in such
>ictures as Le Chant d Amour, and Laus Veneris (works
f the artist's middle period), and the almost monochrome
oloration of the large Annunciation, and Perseus and the
Iraice (which are of later date), is more than enough to
imaze ; and the artist's versatility in matters of technique
s displayed in such work as the highly-wrought Feast of
Deleus and the broadly-conceived Love among the Ruins,
low, alas ! no longer existing in the first and finer version.
It would be very difficult to single out as typical any
ixample of the painter's work ; it is, as a whole, so
ompact together by the ubiquitous evidence of his
>ersonal genius, and so varied in theme and method by
he necessities of each individual conception. Love
imong the Ruins is one of the most beautiful creations
hat ever came even from the fecund brain of Burne-
ones ; it shows lovers who have met among the ruins of
,n ancient city, grass-grown ruins with the wild briar
railing thorny stems over fallen column and sculptured
rieze. The girl, clad in a robe of brilliant hue, clings to
he neck of her lover ; and her face, despite his protecting
>resence, bears the impress of the pity and fear excited
n her mind by the surrounding evidence of " old unhappy
ar-off things, and battles long ago." The expression of
he varying emotions in the lovers' faces, and the vague
ndication of the tragedy that culminated in the desolation
>f such a palatial city, haunt the memory of the beholder,
ong after the details of the picture may be forgotten.
Vtay there not have been, too, in the artist's mind, the
;econdary interpretation which may be read into the

io4 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

work, the everlasting existence of love, its sweetness and
sadness, though nations fall and the kingdoms of the
earth pass away ?

Equally characteristic of Burne-Jones's art is the
sumptuous Laus Veneris, which depicts a royally beauti-
ful woman, attired in marvellous flame-coloured robes,
who reclines pale and weary in the ecstacy of her
love-sickness in a chamber hung with tapestries wrought
in green and blue and gold. Her hand-maidens, richly
dight, stand and sing the praise of Venus, Queen of Love,
from scrolls of music, to charm their mistress's dark
mood away ; while outside, five knights rein in their
horses, regarding with eager eyes the wan queen, and
listening to the damsels' song. Brilliant in colour as a
mediaeval illumination, ardent and intense in feeling, this
picture is as decoratively beautiful as it is poetically
conceived.

The technique of the painter has already been alluded
to. He was a most delicate and careful draughtsman,
revelling in the subtle curves of the human form, and the
gentle flow of draperies ; and though the construction of
his pictures was rather a matter of the sway of lines, of
the building up of a well-ordered decorative design, than
of the inevitable and necessary form which the com-
position was bound to take, there are evidences in all
parts of his work of an unrivalled wealth of invention
supported by irreproachable drawing. A better instance
of Burne-Jones's simpler compositions could not be
named than The Mill, in which the figures of the dancing
maidens, their rhythmic poise and sweep, their suave and
stately movements, are very characteristic; while of the
more complex schemes that he sometimes planned, a
good example is Cupid's Hunting Ground. In much of his
work the involution of the thought is often paralleled by the
intricacy of the rendering ; and the fertility of his invention

SIR EDWARD BURNE-TONES, HART.

KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID

PQ

PQ

EDWARD BURNE-JONES 105

showed itself not only in the richness of the conception,
but in the lavishness of detail and symbol with which it was
illustrated. Where he desired rich colour, the pigments
are used to produce lovely patches of brilliance, which
give rather the effect of a mosaic of tints, than a subtly
ordered harmony pervading the whole scheme ; where he
worked in subdued shades the infinite variety and play
that he attained is very remarkable. Dash and bravura
of execution were, of course, far outside the limits he set
himself; his pride was that every portion of his work bore
evidence of loving care and patient labour, and the result
is that his pictures are gems of beautiful craftsmanship,
enshrining marvels of delicate inspiration.

Almost invariably the subjects of Burne-Jones's works
were drawn from the regions of old romance, sweet
egend, or poetic fable ; magic and enchantment seem to
fill the atmosphere of his pictures; love potions and
spells are natural to this dim fairyland, far removed from
the workaday world. His great decorative gift enabled
him to express in beautiful compositions the vivid scenes
his superb imagination conjured up, and whether the
subject was drawn from classic legend or the realms of
mediaeval tradition, the field in which he conceived the inci-
dents as occurring was one to which he alone had the key.
All through his long career he was constant to one ideal,
and that ideal he expressed perfectly. Weird, fanciful,
imystical, splendid, and dainty as are his dreams, it is not
to be wondered at that to many his sexless figures and
iwan faces seem morbid and unpleasing ; but whether the
jatmosphere of a world of enchantment and wonders is
jnecessarily poisonous because the fresh breeze of actuality
idoes not blow across its meadows is open to doubt ; and
[he would be a bold man who would affirm that the ex-
Ipression of a mind gifted beyond the normal must be
; unhealthy. Certainly, if it is the function of art to invent,

io6 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

to create beautiful unknown things, Burne-Jones was a
great artist, though what place he occupies in the hierarchy
of art it would be difficult to say. His genius can be
fairly compared only with that of one man, his master,
Dante Rossetti, and in relation to the art of his leader,
his own might almost be said to be " as is moonlight unto
sunshine, as is water unto wine." Rossetti's temper was
essentially vigorous, sensuous, and luxuriant, in the
highest degree ; Burne-Jones, always a dreamer and a
mystic, was often ascetic ; a fertile and delicate fancy in
his case took the place of the opulent imagination of the
senior artist. But it is not right to push too far a contrast
between the two artists ; they were not opposites, rather
should they be considered as complementary one to the
other.

The reputation of a great artist is not affected by the
honours of which he was the recipient ; and the medals,
the university degrees, the cross of the Legion of Honour,
the associateship of the Royal Academy (conferred in
1885, resigned in 1893), and finally the baronetcy that
was bestowed upon him, do not affect the critical esteem
of this or future generations ; but it is pleasant to think
that, though many fine artists go to their graves utterly
unrecognised, the subject of this chapter reaped his full
reward in his lifetime.

SIR E. BURNE-JONES, BART.

LOVE DISGUISED AS REASON

SIR E. BURNE-JONES, BART.

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL

CHAPTER XIII
THE ROSSETTI TRADITION, II.:

SPENCER STANHOPE
FAIRFAX MURRAY
J. M. STRUDWICK
T. M. ROOKE
MARIE STILLMAN
EVELYN DE MORGAN

MORE or less contemporary with the two great
pioneers, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, a group of
irtists have worked who derived their inspiration almost
ntirely from one or other of these painters. Though
hey may be legitimately spoken of as disciples, it must
lot be concluded that they are by any means servile
jfollowers of their leaders ; each of them is too individual
^.n artist to be a mere echo ; although it is almost always
the fate of a painter to be classed as an imitator, who
finds that the method and style best adapted to the em-
jbodiment of his ideas have been used and developed by a
(predecessor.

The work of Spencer Stanhope, the friend and fellow-
worker of both Rossetti and Burne-Jones, bears, as might
jbe expected, distinct traces of this association ; but the
influence of Mr G. F. Watts, R. A., who also gave him
instruction and guidance, is apparent as well. A prefer-
ence for religious and allegorical, as well as romantic
themes, is evident in his pictures, which have largely
taken the form of panels for church decoration, executed

io8 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

as accessories to the architectural work of Mr G.
Bodley, A.R.A. Pre-Raphaelite from association, he is also
Pre-Raphaelite in his adherence to primitive methods of
work, for in the pictures which he has painted in tempera
(in which style he has worked as freely as in oils or water-
colours), he adopted the early Italian system of using the
yolk of eggs as a medium, a method demanding extreme
care and patience. The Shulamite, Charon and Psyche,
Eve, Patience on a Monument, and The Waters of Lethe
are among the most noteworthy of his pictures, and the
latter may be taken as typical. The classic title was
adopted (although the character of the picture is by no
means classical), as most suitable for the allegory of
humanity hurrying to cast off its burden and seek rest in
the grave. The passage of the water symbolises death,
the island is the grave, and the gardens in the distance
depict the future state of happiness which comes as the
reward of the pains suffered here. The pure and brilliant
colouring of this refined and elaborate picture makes it
noteworthy as a piece of decoration ; but it is more than
that, inasmuch as (in itself a vehicle of thought) it
demands and rewards the thoughtful consideration of the
spectator.

Of the work of Fairfax Murray, which may perhaps be
said to be more directly inspired by Rossetti than that of
most of his contemporaries, far too little has been seen
of late years. Madonna Laura, Pharamond and Azalais^
The Wanderers, The Violin Players, A Pastoral, and
others, have hung in the Grosvenor Galleries in succeed-
ing years; and the latter, dating from 1882, is a most
charming piece of decoration, representing a group of
noble men and women sitting in an Italian garden,
listening to music discoursed by some of their number.
This is in every way a beautiful work, the purity and
depth of the exquisite colour, especially in the blue robes

u

I

I

il

•

o

«

I
ll

SPENCER STANHOPK

VENUS RISING FROM THE SEA

J. M. STRUDWICK 109

of some of the figures, is masterly ; and the whole picture
exhibits artistic powers of the very highest rank. The
painter is by no means an imitator, but an artist of great
i original power ; and since poetic inspiration and accom-
jplished presentation, such as mark his work, can ill be
spared, it is justly a matter of great regret to his sympa-
thisers that artistic pursuits of another kind should have
precluded Fairfax Murray from practising his craft to
the full.

It is not to be wondered at that a man who has acted
I as assistant first to Spencer Stanhope and then to Burne-
Jones should be saturated with the atmosphere that
imbued those artists, especially when his mind is one
which revels in quaint and beautiful decorative fancies,
in sweet and poetic symbolism. The artistic career of
J. M. Strudwick is a curious one. Born in 1849, his
student days commenced with a course of South Ken-
sington, and though the requirements of the department,
and the mould into which budding artists must perforce
be pressed, were far from congenial, he stayed his time,
and then passed into the Academy Schools. Here all
his endeavours after rewards and distinctions were quite
unsuccessful, and the only encouragement he received
was from the late John Pettie, R.A., which resulted in
an entirely futile endeavour to acquire the bold colour
and free brushwork that marked the work of the Scotch
painter. That such an attempt should have been made
seems ludicrous, when one stops to consider what the
characteristics of Strudwick's own mature style are. His
student days may be said to have been a failure; but
success came when he found his master in the person of
Edward Burne-Jones. This short pupilage showed him
the direction in which his power could best be exercised,
?and from the day when he thus found his mttier he has
never looked back.

no ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

His pictures speak for themselves, and it is easy to see
that with Strudwick, as with Rossetti, the endeavour to
embody beautifully a beautiful conception stands first and
foremost. Inspired, now to pay a painter's homage to
music, now to depict some poetic theme from the regions
of romance, he has painted such pictures as St Cecilia,
Golden Strings, and Elaine ; and in every case he has
adorned his pictures with such wealth of charming detail,
such glow of colour, and such delicacy of handling, that
they haunt the memory even as other sweet visions do.
The Ramparts of God's House may be taken as an example
of his more elaborate compositions. In this "a man
stands on the threshold of heaven, with his earthly shackles
newly broken, lying where they have just dropped, at his
feet. The subject of the picture is not the incident of the
man's arrival, but the emotion with which he finds himself
in that place, and with which he is welcomed by the
angels. The foremost of the two stepping out from
the gate to meet him is indeed angelic in her ineffable
tenderness and loveliness ; the expression of this group,
heightened by its relation to the man, is so vivid, so
intense, so beautiful, that one wonders how this sordid
nineteenth century of ours could have such dreams, and
realise them in its art. Transcendent expressiveness is
the moving quality in all Strudwick's works ; and persons
who are fully sensitive to it will take almost as a matter
of course the charm of the architecture, the bits of land-
scape, the elaborately beautiful foliage, the ornamental
accessories of all sorts, which would distinguish them even
in a gallery of early Italian paintings."

It will be evident from the above quotation from Mr
Bernard Shaw that, Pre-Raphaelite in his desire "to paint
the best possible pictures in the best possible way," he
spares no labour of invention or of craftsmanship that may
make his works as perfect as he desires. He would

{t The gentle music of a byegone day"

J. M. STRUDWICK

ISABELLA

J. M. STRUDWICK— T. M. ROOKE in

almost seem to possess the soul of a mediaeval illuminator
working with the hands of a thoroughly accomplished
artist of to-day. Whether the inspiration is religious or
chivalric, there is an air of aloofness from mundane
matters, of cloistered meditation, about all that he accom-
plishes that is not of this epoch — that carries the mind
Dack to some artist-monk at work in the sequestered
jcriptorium ; and even when a subject from classic myth,
uch as Marsyas and Apollo, attracts the artist, the render-
ng is such as one might expect from an Italian of the
mattro-cento. Delicate, dainty, and fervent, obviously
he creations of a poet, the pictures of Strudwick are
distinguished by an execution as complete and detailed
as the conception ; and yet, despite all the charming
elaboration that marks them, there is an air of simplicity
pervading all his works that is as noteworthy as the
passion for beauty that he everywhere evinces. Beautiful
n conception, beautiful in colour, and charmingly de-
corative, these pictures are evidently the achievement of a
man with a high and a very definite ideal. That ideal he
expresses to perfection, and what more may be asked of
in artist ?

Another painter who at one time worked as an assistant
:o Burne-Jones is T. M. Rooke, who is perhaps best
cnown by the fashion he adopted of painting several
compositions depicting successive scenes of the same
>tory, which were designed to be placed in one frame.
The Story of Ahab, The Story of Ruth, and The
Nativity were pictures of this class, and each was marked
a wealth of invention and a feeling for colour that was
loteworthy. Such pictures as these, and the companion
impositions of Daphne and Clytie, Morning and
^Evening, as well as The Triumph of Saul and David,
'(The Thistledown Gatherer, and the later work, The Man
'Born to be a King, are typical of the artist's style. They

ii2 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

are full of convention and of personal idiosyncrasies, that
can in no wise be deemed faults, and at the same time
they are replete with thought and invention, and with
grace of colour and of line. Hardly a great artist, Rooke
is at any rate a sincere one, and all through his work it is
apparent that the painter deems that every scrap of space
in a picture is precious, and to be wrought as exquisitely
as may be. These little canvases are as vivid as the
pictures of Holman Hunt, though not so actual, by
reason of the decorative sense present throughout ; and
they are the work of a very genuine artist, who is
obviously possessed of the first artistic requisite, a keen
sense of the beautiful.

The names of two ladies, who have also carried on the
Rossetti-Burne-Jones tradition, must bring this chapter to
a close, Mrs Stillman (Miss .Marie Spartali) and Mrs de
Morgan (Miss Evelyn Pickering). The former accom-
plished lady early fell under the personal influence of
Rossetti, and it is not a matter for surprise that her worl
such as the beautiful Persefone Umbra, or Love's Messen-
ger, betrays his inspiration. In the case of Mrs d<
Morgan, the more elaborate compositions that she hj
painted show rather that Burne-Jones and Spencei
Stanhope have been her models ; and Love's Parting,
The Gray Sisters, that fine work, By the Waters oj
Babylon, and The Dawn, are pictures from her easel
distinguished by rich and brilliant colouring, great decora-
tive charm, and sincere poetic inspiration, qualities that
mark this artist as not the least of the disciples who ha\
worthily worked on the lines first attempted by Danl
Rossetti.

EVELYN DE MORGAN

FLORA

CHAPTER XIV

PRE-RAPHAELISM TO-DAY,

1HE ripples of the agitation started by the formation
of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are still sweeping
on, and widening as they go. It may be that the main
work that the initiators set themselves to do has been
accomplished, and accordingly the movement is more
diffuse and less marked than in its early and more
vehement days ; but the two phases, the genuine Pre-
Raphaelite inspiration, and what has here been termed
for convenience the Rossetti tradition, are still potently
existent. The inception and rise of yet another branch
of the art movement, of what may be termed the
decorative school, can also undoubtedly be traced to
the influence of the members of the Brotherhood and
their associates. Such work as that of C. M. Gere, J. E.
Southall, L. Fairfax Muckley, Arthur Gaskin, H. Payne,
and the other artists of the Birmingham group, is
evidently the outcome of Pre-Raphaelism ; and equally
the moving spirit of such decorative artists as Charles
Ricketts, C. H. Shannon, J. D. Batten, Henry Holiday,
Heywood Sumner, the brothers Rhead, and the various
supporters of the Arts and Crafts Association, may be
traced to the same source.

More frankly inspired by Rossetti and Burne-Jones are
such pictures of individual merit and poetic charm as have
been painted by Gerald Moira, The Kings Daughter, and
Willow-wood-, Archie M'Gregor, The Spirit of Life, and
The Mirrors of Time ; Graham Robertson, The Queen of
H

H4 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Samothrace, and My Lady Greensleeves ; Henry Ryland,
Summer Thoughts, and others ; Cayley Robinson, The
Beautiful Castle, and The Close of the Day ; Byam Shaw,
Whither, Love's Baubles, and others. Curiously enough,
Madox Brown, probably the most individual artist of the
original group, has founded no school, but his pupil,
Harold Rathbone, naturally shows his influence ; and it
has been said that the work of Edwin Abbey, R.A., is to
some extent reminiscent of the achievement of the dead
artist. Other painters that must also be classed as Pre-
Raphaelite are, E. R. Frampton, H. J. Ford, and E. A.
Fellowes Prynne ; and such work of T. C. Gotch's as The
Child Enthroned, Alleluia, and other pictures in a similar
style, almost seem to fall into the same category.

Noteworthy work is at present being done on the most
rigid Pre-Raphaelite principles by Miss Eleanor Brickdale,
who, in such pictures as The Deceitfulness of Riches,
achieves a notable success in a most ambitious style. This
painter should do much in the future to exemplify the
still living force of Pre-Raphaelism as a school. Another
lady, Miss Katherine Cameron, should also be mentioned
in this connection ; the purity and brilliance of her colour
would almost seem to mark her out as artistically the
descendant of Rossetti, while the delicacy of her fancy
and the poetic quality of her inspiration are equally
noteworthy. The influence of the Pre-Raphaelites is also
surely to be seen in the pictures of J. Young Hunter, whose
My Lady's Garden is not the least noteworthy of the
recent purchases under the Chantrey Bequest, and whose
later work shows no falling off from this achievement ;
while Wolfram Onslow Ford in the portrait of his father —
and in other pictures — seems almost to have gone back
to the primitives themselves for his inspiration. And even
while this edition was passing through the press, the
Royal Academy Exhibition exemplified once more the

F. C. COWPER

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

' ' And he set him on his own
beast and brought him to an inn

i

•

^

W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON

MY LADY GREENSLEEVES

PRE-RAPHAELISM TO-DAY 115

Dersistence of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition and influence
n the work of Dennis Eden, Sidney H. Meteyard, and
Campbell L. Smith. The work of these young artists is
"ull of charm and has much individuality, both of outlook
md presentment ; of course it is impossible to say
vhether this present Pre-Raphaelism is but a phase or
vhether it is the promise of continued good work along
:hese same lines. However this may be, it is pleasant to
>ee that, not only did the work of the great men, painted
ifty years ago, influence their contemporaries, but that it
ilso has a distinct following of disciples to-day.

All these names are but a random selection ; every visitor
:o the exhibitions of to-day will mentally add to this brief
ist ; perhaps it will be better, instead of lengthening it, to
ievote the following paragraphs to a note on the work of
:wo of these artists who may be taken as typical of the
^resent development of Pre-Raphaelism — Cayley Robinson
md Byam Shaw.

The artistic career of the latter, although as yet brief,
s very interesting from the fact that his love of Rossetti's
ichievements, both poetic and artistic, seems to have
:arried him up the stream of that painter's style, to the
earliest Pre-Raphaelite days. That is to say, that such
vork as Circle-wise sit they. Silent Noon, and Rose Marie,
llustrations of Rossetti's poems, are also reminiscent of
:he poet-painter's later pictorial method ; while the later
Drilliant Love's Baubles, and the still later Boer War,
rpoo, are much more searchingly and carefully painted-
ire, in fact, in the strictest sense Pre-Raphaelite. In all
:hese works, and in the cabinet pictures he has recently
devoted himself to, the artist shows an intense desire to
express his theme clearly, with a distinct preference for
subjects of a high poetic order ; and he displays a
technical accomplishment and a daring in the use of pure
:olour (in Whither, and The Queen of Hearts, for

n6 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

instance), that are remarkable in the work of so young a
painter. The reproductions of his work in this volume
speak for themselves; his Academy picture of 1897 at
present marks the highwater mark of his accomplishment.
Love's Baubles represents a band of radiant maidens who
pursue across a flower be-spangled lawn the winged
figure of Love, striving to obtain from him the fruit he
bears in a golden dish. The elastic movement of the
laughing boy, winged and aureoled by butterflies, is
admirably rendered ; the painting of the whole is close
and masterly, though in no way niggled, and reminiscent
in its purity and brilliance of the work of Millais, when
that artist painted Mariana, and The Blind Girl; and
the symbolism is not so complex as to be cryptic. It is
pleasant to see the artist's disposition to depict joyous
circumstances, the gladness of youth, and the sweetness
of smiling faces ; to note his inclination to exalt our Lady
of Happiness above our Lady of Pain (as has been well
said) ; and to observe that there is a reaction against the
sadness, not to say morbidity, that one has been apt to
associate with much of the elder Pre-Raphaelite art.
When the promise in a young artist's work is so great,
one is justified in hoping — nay more, in expecting — that
he may be able to attain in the future a very exalted
position in the annals of English art.

Far other is the work of Cayley Robinson. Robustness
of thought and execution, and a riot of colour are not for
him, rather is he a dreamer of dreams, and a dweller in
the twilit land of old romance. The atmosphere of
medievalism so apparent in A Souvenir of a Past Age,
The Beautiful Castle, and The Close of the Day, would
seem his native air, so well he imbues with it these
pictures painted in an alien century. To an unusual
extent his work is thoughtful and imaginative ; highly
original in his ideas, he has consistently worked along the

CAYLEY ROBINSON

THE BEAUTIFUL CASTLE

- I
3 I

2 I

: J

.8

BYAM SHAW

THE BOER WAR, 1900

Last summer green things were greener •,
brambles fewer •, the blue sky bluer"

— CHRISTINA

ROSSETTI.

PRE-RAPHAELISM TO-DAY 117

lines he decided were those he meant to follow ; and into
each of his pictures, full of delicate charm, the spectator
will read just so much of poetry and romance as his own
soul is gifted with. A curious formality which undoubtedly
makes for decorative beauty is apparent in his art, and all
his pictures bear evidence of ungrudging expenditure of
thought and patient labour ; features that his work has in
common with that of Burne-Jones, from whom he has
undoubtedly learnt much. But no one standing before
one of Cayley Robinson's pictures would take it for the
work of the elder artist ; he has not only preserved his
individuality, he has shown us that there are still un-
exhausted possibilities in art. Popular his work will
never be, but those to whom it appeals recognise that it
is the accomplishment of a painter of great power and
marked charm, from whom still finer things may con-
fidently be anticipated.

Whether any of the painters whose names are
mentioned in this chapter are destined, in carrying on
the work of Pre-Raphaelism, to produce work of the
highest artistic rank, as was done in the last generation
by the founders of the movement ; or whether the
splendour of the pictures painted in the past is to remain
the unapproached high-water mark of the school, it were
vain to speculate. That there are artists among the
younger painters whose promise justifies us in hoping
very great things of them is, one is glad to say, evident ;
and there is reason to trust that the coming men may do
as fine work as their forerunners. The principles of
Pre-Raphaelism remain as essentially true as when first
promulgated, and work equally good ought to be the
result of an honest acceptance of them ; but perhaps it is
too much to hope to find among their exponents such a
galaxy of genius as the original founders and followers of
the Brotherhood.

WOLFRAM O. FORD

PORTRAIT OF E. ONSLOW FORD, R.A.

ARTHUR J. GASKIN

THE ANNUNCIATION

INDEX

Titles of pictures are printed in italics

ABBEY, Edwin, R.A., 114

Afterglow, The, 28

Alas tor, 67

Alleluia, 114

Amaryllis, 29, 30

Amor Mundi, 59

Amor Sacramentum, 64

Angel of Death, 78

Annunciation, The (Burne-Jones), I O2,

103

Annunciation, The (Storey), 87
April Love, 70
Arab Scribe, The, 91
Archer, James, 89
Arnold, Mattheiv, Portrait of, 62
Ana, 67
Astarte, 51

At Tou Like It, Scene from, 54
Autumn Leaves, 32, 34, 35
A'wakened Conscience, The, 28

Backgammon Players, The, IO2

Barthram's Dirge, 73

Batten, J. D., 113

Battersea, Lord, Portrait of, 62

Beata Beatrix, 45, 57

Beautiful Castle, The, 114, 116

Beguiling of Merlin, The, IOI, 103

Belcolore, 45

Beloved, The, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51

Bianco Capello, 88

Blind Girl, 34, 89, 116

-S/w C/wrf, The, 42

Bluidie Tryst e, The, 73

Bodley, Mr. G. F., A.R.A., 108

Boer War, 1900, The, 115

Brancacci Chapel, Frescoes at, 4

Brett, John, 86, 87

Briar Rose Series, The, 101

Brickdale, Eleanor F., 114

Bride, The, 45, 48, 5:

Bridge of Life, The, 96

Broken Voivs, 88

Brown, Ford Madox, i et seq,

Ruskin and, 12 ; 17 et seq., 38
Brown, Oliver, Madox, 23
Bubbles, 88
Burd Helen, 79, 80
Burial of the Bride, The, 87
Burne-Jones, Sir E., 8, 92, 99 et seq,

109-111, 112, 113, 117
Burton, W. S., 57, 75, 77 et seq.
By the Waters of Babylon, 1 12

Calderon, P. H., R.A., 88
Cameron, Hugh, 89
Cameron, Katherine, 114
Carpenter's Shop, The, 33
Cassandra, 6 1

Chant cT Amour, Le, 102-103
Chapel before the Lists, The, 42
Chariots of the Hours, 96

120 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Charity B"y's Debut, The, 53

Charon and Psyche, 108

Chatterton, 86

Chaucer reading the Legend of Constance,

Child Enthroned, The, 114

Christ among the Doctors, 26, 28

Christ and Peter, 94

Christ in the House of his Parents, 33

Christ -washing Peter's Feet, 17, 19

Church, Dean, Portrait of, 6^

Circle-ivise Sit they, 115

Clara i on Bork, I o I

Close of the Day, 114, H 6

Clytie, III

Collins, Charles Allston, 75, 76

Collinson, James, 6, 10, 52, 53

Colvin, Sydney, 43

Convalescent, The, 90

Convent Thoughts, 76

Converted British Family sheltering a

^Missionary, 28
Cordelia and Lear, 1 9
Cordelia's Portion, 19
" Cornhill Magazine," 81
Corsair, The, 21
Cottage Interior, BorroivJale, 89
Crane, Walter, 94 et seq.
Cram-well at St. Ives, 20
Cupid and Psyche, 103
Cupid's Hunting-Ground, 104

Dalton collecting Marsh Gas, 2O
Danae in the Brazen Chamber, 5 1
Dante dra-wing the Face of Beatrice, I OO
Dante on the Anniversary of the Death of

Beatrice, 42
Dante's Leah, 87
Daphne, III

Daughter of the Vine, A, 96
Davis, H. W. B., R.A., 88
Davis, William, 87
Daivn (Solomon), 64
Daivn, The (E. de Morgan), 1 12
Daivn : Luther at Erfurt, 72
Days of Creation, The, 163

Death of Bede, 98

Deceitf tilness of Riches, The, 114

De Morgan, Evelyn, 112

Depths of the Sea, The, 103

Deverell, Walter Howell, 6, 53, 54

Diana and the Shepherd, 95

Dies Domini, 103

Doctor's Last Visit, The, 54

Donna del/a Finestra, 15, 45, 57

Door nf a Cafe in Cairo, 9 1

Doubtful Coin, The, 91

Douglas, Sir W. Fettes, P.R.S.A.,

89

Doivie Dens ofTarro-w, The, 73
Duet, The, 23
Du Maurier, G., 49

Ecce Ancilla Domini, 15, 41

Eden, Dennis, 114

Elaine, no

Endymion, 96

Escape of a Heretic, The, 35, 37

Eve, 1 08

Evening, HI

F.ve of St. Agnes, 70

Eve of the Deluge, The, 97

Execution of Mary Queen of Scott, "2.

Expulsion of the Danes, ZO

Fair Rosamond, 45

Fairy Raid, The, 73

Faithful unto Death, 78

Fazio's Mistress, 42

Feast of Peleus, The, 103

Ferdinand and Ariel, 33, 35

Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, Z%

Flight of Henry VI. , 80

Ford, H. J., 114

Ford, W. O., 114

Foscari, 21

Found, 57

Frampton, E. R., 114

Freedom, 96

Garden Seat, The, 88
Gaskin, Arthur, 113

INDEX

121

Gere, C. M., 113

Girl ivith Flotvers, 76

Girlhood of Mary Virgin, IO, 40

Going to the Hay, 89

Golden Stairs, The, 103

Golden Strings, no

Good- Night, 70

Good Shepherd, The, 94

Gotch, T. C., 114

Gray, J. M., 88, 89

Gray Sisters, The, III

Greek High Priest, 65

Green, John Richard, Portrait of, 62

Green Summer, IO2

Gregorius, Professor, 18

Guarded Boiver, The, 70

Habet, 64

Harald Harfagr, 59

Hareem, The, 91

Henderson, Joseph, 89

Hireling Shepherd, The, ^6 , If, 87, 90

Holbein, A Modern, 18

Holiday, Henry, 113

Home, 70

Home from Sea, 70

Hueffer, Mrs., 23

Hughes, Arthur , 15, 69 et seq. , 93

Huguenot, The, 33, 34, 35

Hunt, W. Holman, 2 et seq., 32, 38,

85, 87, 112
Hunter, J. Young, 114

// Ramoscello, 45

Inchbold, J. W., 87

In M.emoriam, 72

Isabella, and the Pot of Basil, 30

Jolt Caur, 45
Jonah, 94

Katharina and Petruchio, 8*
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 103
King Egfrid offering the Bishopric of
Hexham to St. Cuthbert, 98
I

K*ng of Sorroivs, The, 78
King Rene's Honeymoon, i<j
King's Daughter, The, 113
King's Quhair, The, 98

La Bella Mano, 45, 51

Lady Lilith, 45

Lady ofShalott, The, 30

Lady -with a Bird- Cage, 54

Lambs at Play, 8 1

Lancelot and Guinevere, 73

Lancelot and Guinevere at the Tomb of

Arthur, 42

Last Day in the Old Home, 82
Last of England, 2O, 84
Laus Veneris, 103, 104
Lawless, Matthew James, 75, 81
Lawrence, Samuel, 58
Leslie, G. D., 87
Lesson, The, 82
Lewis, J. F., 89, 90, 91
Leiuis, Mrs., Portrait of, 6l
Light of the World, The, 26, 28
Lilium Auratum, 91
Linton, Sir J. D., 49
Linton, W. S., 96
LonBjn JMagdalen, A, 78
Lorenzo at the House of Isabella, 9, 10,

33

Lost Child, The, 70
Love among the Ruins, IO2, 103
Love and Time, 94
Love in Autumn, 64
Love's Baubles, 114, 115, Il6
Love's Parting, 112
Lucrezia Borgia, 42

M'Gregor, Archie, 113

M'Taggart, W., 90

M.ade>nna Laura, 108

Man born to be a King, The, III

Manchester Toivn Hall, Frescoes at.

20

Man of Sorrows, The, 74
Manoli, 59

122 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Man -with the Muck-Rake, The, 74

Mariana (Rossetti), 45

Mariana in the Moated Grange (Millais),

i4» 34> 37> 9°> II6

Maris, Matthew, 49

Marriage of the Prince of Wales, 29

Marten at Chepsto-w Castle, 86

Martineau, Robert, 75, 81, 8*

Marsyas and Apollo, \\Q

Match-Seller, The, 89

May Day on Magdalen Tower , 29

Medea, 15, 60, 6 1

Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Purga-
tory, 43

Merciful Knight, The, IO2

Meteyard, Sidney H.. 115

Midsummer Night's Dream, Scenes from,

73

Mill, The, 102, 104
Millais, John Everett, 2 et seq,, 31 el

seg., 116

Mirror of Venus, The, 103
Mirrors of Time, The, 113
Moira, Gerald, 113
Monna Rosa, 45
Monna Vanna, 45
Moore, Henry, 86
Morgan le Fay, 60, 6l
Morning, III

Morris, William, 76, 77, 100
Mors Janua Vitae, 74
Moses, 64

Muckley, L. Fairfax, 113
Murray, Fairfax, 108, 109
My Lady Greens leeves, 113
My Lady's Garden, 114

Nativity, The, III
Neptune' 's Horses, 96
Nightmare, The, 59

Old Chartist. The, 59
"Once a Week," 59, 81
O'Neil, H., 8 1
Ophelia (Arthur Hughes), 69

Ophelia (Millais), 32. 34, 71

Order of Release, The, 34, 37

Ormuzd and Ariman, 96

Our Lady of Good Children, 19

Outlaw, The, 80

Owen. Sir Richard, Portrait of, 29

Palmer, Mrs Jean, Portrait of, 6z

Pan and Psyche, 103

Pandora, 96

Paola and Francesca, 42

Parisina's Sleep, 2, 1 8

Passover in the Holy Family, 42

Pastoral, A, 108

Patience on a Monument, 108

Patmore, Coventry, 12

Paton, Sir Noel, 71 etseq., 89, 93

Paton, Waller, 87

Payne H., 113

Pedlar, The, 76

Penelope, 6 1

Persefone Umbra, or Love's Messenger,

112

Perseus and the Graiae, 103
Pettie, John, 109
Pharamond and Azalais, 108
Plains of Esdraelon, The, 28
Pretty Baa Lambs, 19
Priest of an Eastern Church, 65
Prinsep, Val, 87, 88
Proscribed Royalist, The, 14, 34, 37,

78,84

Proserpina, 45, 47
Proud Maiiie, 6 1
Prynne. E. A. Fellowes, 114
Pygmalion Series, The, IO1

Queen Guenevere, 77
Queen of Hearts, 115
Queen of Samothrace , The, 113

Rainbow and the Wave, The, 96
Ramparts of God's House, The, IIO
Rathbone, Harold, 114
Red Cross Knight in Search of Una, 96

INDEX

123

Renascence of f^'enits, 96

Renunciation of Elizabeth of Hungary,

53

Rescue, The, 34

Retro Me Sathana, 40

Return from Marston Moor, 86

Return of the Dove to the Ark, The,

34

Rhead, The Brothers, 113
Richmond, George, 58
Ricketts, Charles, 115
Rienzi swearing Vengeance over his

Brother's Corpse, IO, 17
Robertson, Graham, 113
Robinson, Cayley, 114, 115, 116,

117

Roll of Fate, 96

Romans Building Mancunium, The, 2O
Romeo and Juliet (Madox Brown), 2O,

21

Romeo and Juliet (Mrs. Rossetti), 23
Rooke, T. M., in, 112
Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards, £9
Rose Marie, 115

Rose, Mrs. Anderson, Portrait of, 62
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, i et seq.,

*3, *6, 38, 39 t "I-, 53, 57, 59,

100, 106, 113, 114
Rossetti, Mrs. W. M., 23
Rossetti, William Michael, 7, 8, 9,

5*, 55

Ruby Ring, The, 89

Ruskin, John, n, 12, 13, 27, 30,

32, 52, 70, 80, 86
Ryland Henry, 114

St. Cecilia, IIO

Sandys, Frederick, 14, 57, 58 et seq.

Satan watching the Sleep of Christ, 74

Scapegoat, The, 28, 78

Scott, William Bell, 97

Seddon, Thomas, 87

Shadow of Death, The, 28

Shadow of the Cross, The, 26

Shannon, C. H., 113

Shaw, Bernard, no

Shaw, Byam, 114, 115

Shee, Sir M. A., 31

Shields, Frederic, 93, 94

Ship, The, 29

Shulamite, The, 118

Sick Call, The, 8 1

Siddall, Miss, 53

Sidonia von Bork, IOI

Silent Noon, 115

Silver and Gold, 70, 72

Sirens, The, 95

Sir Galahaa, 42

Sir Isumbras at the Ford, 15, 33, jj,

37, 95

Smith, Campbell L., 115
Solomon Eagle, 94
Solomon, Simeon, 57, 63 et seq.
Song of the Past, 87
Southall, J. E. 113
Souvenir of a Past Age, 1 1 6
Spell, The, 89
Spirit of Life, The, 113
Springtide, JO
Stanhope, Spencer, 107, 108, 109,

112

Steer, Mr. Wilson, 49

Stephens, Frederick George, 6, 46,

52

Stillman, Marie, 112
Stonebreaker, The, 15, 86
Storey, G. A., 87
Storm, The, 90
Story of Ahab, in
Story of Ruth, III
Strayed Sheep, The, 28, 8 1
Street Scene in Cairo, 91
Strudwick, J. M., 85, 109 et seq.
Summer, 95
Summer Thoughts, 114
Sumner, Hey wood, 113
Surgeon's Daughter, The, 79

Tapestry Worker, The, 89
Tt Deum Laudamus, 93
Ttnnyson, Lord, Portrait of, 6l
Thistledown Gatherer, III

124 ENGLISH PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTERS

Thorn in the Foot, 90
Tissot, James, 90
Too Late, 79, 80
Transit of Venus, 2O
Triumph of Faith, The, 93
Triumph of Saul and David, 1 1 1
Triumph <f the Innocents, 28
Triumph of Will, The, 90
Tune of Seven Towers, The, 42
Turkish School, The, 91
Twelfth Night, Scene from, .53
Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1 6, 1

Vade Satana, 74
Val d'Aosta, 87
Vale of Rest, The, 36
Valkyrie, 59

Van Hanselaer at Ghent , 1 8
r<f»w.r Verticordia, 45
Veronica Veronese, 45
Vigilate et Orate, 73

3°

Virgin Mary, IO
ffvfoi, 60, 6l

Waiting for the Verdict, 63
Wappers, Baron, 18

Wallis, Henry, 86

Wanderers, The, 1 08

JFafcrj of Lethe, The, 108

Watson, J. D., 88

Watts, G. P., 107

Webbe, W. J., 81

Wedding of St. George, The, 4*

Westminster Hall, Cartoons at, 1

Wheel of Fortune, IOZ

When the Boats Come In, 90

Whispering Tongues can poison Truth,

88

Whistler, J. M'Neil, 49
Whither, 114, 115
Widow's Son, The, Zl
William TeWs Son, 78
Willow-wood, 113
Wilson, George, 57, 65 rf «y.
JPi'/j* of Circe, IO2
Hindus, W. L., 57, 75, 79, 80
Wontner, William, 49
Woodman's Daughter, 12, 34
Woolner, Thomas, 6, 7, 10, 51
Work, 19, 21
World's Gratitude, The, 79
Wounded Cavalier, The, 77, 78

, 80

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

,

INDINGSECT. MAY 2 11981

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

ND

B3
1905

Bate, Percy H.

The English pre-Raphaelite
painters, their associates
and successors